James Hollis

How do you define “growing up”? Does it mean you achieve certain cultural benchmarks—a steady income, paying taxes, marriage, and children? Or does it mean leaving behind the expectations of others and growing into the person you were meant to be? If you find yourself in a career, place, relationship, or crisis you never foresaw and that seems at odds with your beliefs about who you are, it means your soul is calling on you to reexamine your path. With Living an Examined Life, James Hollis offers an essential guidebook for anyone at a crossroads in life Here this acclaimed author guides you through 21 areas for self-inquiry and growth—such as how to exorcise the ghosts of your past, when to choose meaning over happiness, how to construct a mature spirituality, and how to seize permission to be who you really are With his trademark eloquence and insight, Dr. Hollis offers a potent resource you’ll return to time and again to energize and inspire you on your journey to create a life of personal authority, integrity, and fulfillment.

Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey

Living an Examined Life

Laura Mei

We often expect others to take care of us while we cavil against the inadequacies of our affiliations and wonder why our roles alone fail to confirm our maturity and provide continuing satisfaction. From this gap between the expectations of our projections and transferences, we may, from time to time, come to realize that we are accountable for how things are playing out. When that realization occurs, a heroic summons follows. 

What am I asking of the other that I am not addressing myself

? I suspect that all of us have a sneaking suspicion that we are deferring this question, this responsibility, and have done so for a long time. This question is heroic because it embodies a shift in our center of gravity from the “other” out there, to the other within. In other words, something in each of us always knows when we are shirking, avoiding, procrastinating, or rationalizing. Sometimes, we are obliged to face these uncomfortable facts when our plans, relationships, and expectations of others collapse, and we are left holding the bag of consequences. Sometimes others get in our face and demand we deal with what we have avoided. Sometimes, we have interruptive symptoms, troubling dreams, and meetings with ourselves in dark hours, and then we must face the fugitive life we are perpetuating. Something within us always knows and always registers its opinion. Naturally, we will avoid this subpoena from the soul as long as we can, until it knocks so forcibly that we have to answer the door. The moment we say, I am responsible, I am accountable, I have to deal with this, is the day we grow up.

Something within us knows what is right for us and knows when we are living in 

 or bad faith. Our soul can manage a great deal of suffering, loss, isolation, and much more if it feels that there is a purpose to the suffering. It cannot long tolerate suffering without meaning nor abide our compromises with ourselves. As Jung pointed out, the smallest of things with meaning is infinitely greater than things without meaning, and meaning is defined by our souls, not our culture. Returning to our task also means that we have to show up as we are, adding our small but critically important piece to the mysterious puzzle of life. And we must do it in the face of whatever obstacles the fates, the whimsical gods, or pernicious people in our histories have brought us. In other words, the meaning of our life will be a direct function of the degree to which we became more nearly ourselves and showed up as best we could in the face of the difficulties that life presented. There is often a perverse satisfaction in self-sabotage, of slipping into our life, of turning away when the invitation is large. Psychologically speaking, in those moments we are asked to return to our task — the task of being who we are.

In the marketplace of ideas, there is no one who is going to show up and explain it all to [you]. You must figure it out for [yourself] through trial and error and occasional suffering. No one really knows what is going on. When we were children, we presumed the folks in the big bodies knew what was going on. Guess again. When we first entered adulthood, we presumed that the people in exterior authority knew what was happening and that they had our best interests at heart. Guess again. Growing up requires that we accept that no one out there knows what is going on, that they are as much at the mercy of their complexes and unconscious mechanisms as the least of us, and so now we must figure it out for ourselves. How many of us are still waiting for permission to be who we are and to live the journey meant for us? When we were young, we believed there was a collection of knowledge that we could access to help us understand life; knowledge that explained what we were about, how we were to live, and how life could make sense to us. Little did we imagine in those hours of yearning that we grew more through the questions than any answers we might have received. After a while, one begins to suspect what is so obvious now: that there are only answers to small questions and answers that make sense to you at this moment in your life and which will fail you later in your journey. What is seemingly true today will be outgrown tomorrow when life or our soul brings us a larger frame through which to view them.

Living an Examined Life quotes

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