The Caveman

A friend who can't believe I'd rather stay home and spread compost or re-read Joseph Campbell than go shopping or out for coffee called yesterday and asked, "Have you exploded into a ball of light yet?"

And I said, "No. Just the opposite. Today I am totally in shadow."



Teetering right on the brink of publishing a book about the human shadow--the web site up, the book at the printer and ready to be shipped out to the distributor, the marketing started--I find myself completely whelmed, over and under, inside and out, by awareness of my own shadow. Absolutely covered in murk.

Friends and neighbors look at me and see a middle-aged Beauty--the kind, pleasant, responsible, pillar of the community--but when I look in the mirror this week I see the caveman. Primitive. Carping, impatient, negative, mean. Swinging a club of words under its breath as it lurches from side to side down a narrow, rocky path. A clear danger to anyone it meets.

Who is this guy? What is all this negativity I carry within me? Where does it come from? What does it want?

One thing's for sure: it belongs to me. It's definitely mine.

If I sit still long enough to let reality enter the picture, it becomes very clear that every negative thing I think or say about others appears in my own conduct, or has at one time or another.

That the caveman swings his club at his own shadow.
K