Dallying with Demons

No, “Dallying with Demons” is not about the election.  OK, maybe it is, but in the way Norman Mailer’s “Why We Are in Viet Nam” is.  To remind you, I was in France last month, and near the end, I wrote in my diary:

19 October

“To all who go on pilgrimage,

Your demons will come along.

Out in the world alone, you are exposed to the elements of yourself as well as the elements at large.  With the mind at loose from tasks and duties and schedules, the voices that have been dampened by your organized and grownup and sensible self will come out to play.

Why say this now?  Because I have heard them in the last two or three days.  You may or may not know your demons, but I am well acquainted with mine, the chief of whom is incompetence and its sidekick cowardice.  This morning, especially, as I read about accomplishments of comrades and friends, that evil whisper is in my ear saying, “you could have been as good as them, but you choked.”

The Shadow Knows

The word demon comes from the ancient Greek δαιμον, which were both good and bad spirits that lured or warned people.  Carl Jung expanded on this with the concept of the Shadow, the part we all have that is out of sight but part of us.  His is a complex theory and even applies it to society. 

That’s what prompted me to post this thought.  Maybe America has a shadow side, has its own daimons/demons that live out of sight and lure and warn.  Maybe what divides us is that we see them differently; that what is a good daimon for me is bad for you, and vice versa.  

This is not new.

My demons have been there since I was a child.  So are those demons and daimons of my nation.  My task, if that is the right word, is to accept them as part of me, part of what makes me whole.  If, as a notable colleague once said, “life is just a chance to grow a soul,” then for me and perhaps for America, the spiritual task of our life is to find ways to see them as parts of us.  Perhaps a little dallying with demons is a good thing.  Not fun, but good.

How Now Pale Pants?

Not only Jung but Suess had this idea going.  I’ll let Suess do the talking, though.

“Now it is time to be on the path,” I wrote, and set out for my penultimate day.