At A Crossroads How To Make A Choice And Find Your Way?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Each of us sooner or later finds himself at a crossroads in life and poses difficult questions: "Where am I going?", "For what?" and "What will happen next?"

The search for meaning and purpose is, of course, a complex existential problem. And really happy are those people who managed to solve it for themselves, because it is known that if you know “why”, you can endure any “how”.

If you delve into the archetypal balls of our subconscious, you can find incredible examples of solving these difficult situations, which we, as carriers of the collective unconscious, already have in place.

And we can find very valuable metaphors of the “crossroads” situation in life in folk tales.

We all remember the well-known saying from the story about Ivan Tsarevich: “if you go straight, you will lose your horse, if you go to the left, you will lose yourself, if you go to the right, you will lose yourself and your horse”.

At first glance, this is a “choice without choice” situation. But it only seems so, because if we recall how unexpectedly the plot of this story unfolded for Ivan (first the Fool, and then Tsarevich), we understand that there are no hopeless situations. And the options of “choice without choice” seem to be so complexly veiled that a person chooses his path “with his heart”, intuition, or (as in the case of Ivan) by the method of exclusion, because other roads were already occupied.

So, Ivan turns to the right, because when the brothers made their choice, only this road remained for him. And such a lack of initiative in the situation, the absence of critical thinking characterizes his nickname "Fool". But, on the other hand, this is a very good illustration of the fact that only by discarding our pride, unnecessary pathos, we can feel real impulses of the soul, trust the situation and the world, get into an energy flow that will lead us onto our path and lead us to ourselves., that is, to us in the present.

And as a result, Ivan becomes the owner of wondrous miracles: a wolf that talks, a magic horse, a firebird, a miracle Princess.

In particular, a very interesting character in this tale is the Wolf. Although he eats Ivan's horse, as it turns out later, he is not at all scary, and, what is remarkable, without him Ivan would not have coped with the assigned tasks and would not have been able to fulfill his destiny.

Thus, the Wolf personifies Ivan's shadow side.

Shadow, as defined by K.-G. Jung, contains all those collective attitudes of the personality that conflict with social rules and laws of morality, and are defined as objectionable, therefore, are supplanted. But they do not disappear, but subconsciously control and determine our behavior. Therefore, when you manage to get to know and make friends with your Shadow, it turns out that you can turn it to your advantage, because there is a whole storehouse of useful resources.

Ivan's transformation from "Fool" to "Tsarevich" is a very good metaphor for the personal changes of a person who managed to choose the right path at the crossroads of life.

That is, he still ruined himself, but just in order to then have the opportunity to find himself, renewed and transformed.

And in order to facilitate the difficult situation of choice when we find ourselves at a crossroads, and still confirm the choice of the "heart" with rational arguments, I propose to use a technique called "Descartes' square".

Its essence is to pass each option through the prism of four questions: “What will happen if this happens?”, “What will happen if this does not happen?”, “What will not happen if this happens?” will happen if this does not happen?"

Using these questions, you can determine the most significant selection criteria for yourself, as well as predict and evaluate the consequences of each decision option.

Finally, you can flip a coin. After all, it is known that even before the moment when the coin falls to the ground, a person already knows perfectly well which side he wants to see.