A story from Japan tells the tragic tale of the diligent man who had a terribly lazy wife. She was so lazy that he had to do absolutely everything on her behalf. One day he had to go away for a few days. He was really worried about this, concerned that she would fail to feed herself. So he devised a plan and cooked a donut shaped loaf of bread which he then put on a string and tied around her neck. Several days later when he returned he found her sat in the same chair he left her in, stone dead, with a single bite out of the donut loaf which was as far down as she could be arsed to reach her mouth. He let out a howl of despair, exclaiming ‘if only the string was a little shorter..!’
For what purpose is this story told? Is the moral simply that you can’t take responsibility for others if they are determined to destroy themselves? Or does it go deeper? It’s tempting to focus on the psychopathology of the lazy wife, to wonder about her self destructiveness and what might have been underlying her refusal to help herself. Yet you have to wonder about the husband and what his deal might be despite the less obvious disturbance. On the face of it he just wants to help, right? He was diligent and hardworking so how could any fault be laid at his door?
In ‘Memories, Dreams and Reflections’, Jung describes an encounter with just such a diligent man, a guru in fact, reputedly without stain or blemish. Jung describes stalking this man like a bloodhound for four days in search of some sign of his shadow side which he simply could not find and was ready to abandon his theories,… ‘until I met his wife’.
The diligent man has a hand in his wife’s laziness. His ‘If only’ makes him seem even more diligent than he already appears and yet garnering all the dynamism in the couple to himself really has contributed to her death. His ‘if only’ is a further bid for omnipotence whilst washing his hands of the fact that the donut loaf he made may as well have been a millstone to drown her in his own self fulfilling prophecy.
Parents often do this with their kids, making themselves into paragons of virtue, whilst the children carry the shadow for them and subsequently fail at school or get themselves in trouble with the law.
“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.” CG Jung
One of the standing jokes in the village I grew up in was that the kids of the minister and his wife were out back of the club house getting hammered whilst the children of the town drunks were polishing the church candlesticks.
This damaging dynamic of ‘if only’ is almost as pernicious for those who survive it as it is for those who do not. The reason for this is that as soon as you indulge in ‘if only’ your fate immediately lies beyond your own grasp. You are no longer the captain of your ship. Personal agency is undermined by the idea that life has to be a particular way in order for it to be fully lived. I would be happy if only xyz. My marriage would be a success if only s/he would do abc. My career would be satisfying if only my boss was etc… ‘If only’ makes victims of anyone who utters it.
Not only can I do nothing to help myself. I need do nothing, for it is the world which has to change and not me. Lurking beneath the victimhood is the arrogant inflation and moral conviction that I have not contributed anything to my situation. What’s holding me back has nothing to do with me. I need not examine my own soul. My conscience is pristine. I need not evolve. It’s up to the Universe to get in line.
Most of us have a whole raft of ‘if onlys’, which both cosset and justify misery, making individuation impossible. The absolution of any responsibility for your situation means there’s nothing to be done. Your fate is set in stone. Everything lies outside you. Wishful thinking is not just a waste of time. It stops you growing.
One of the favourite ‘if onlys’ has to do with having more money and often, more specifically, the ‘if only’ of winning the lottery. The lottery industry is a multi billion dollar affair worldwide and preoccupies much of our collective imagination. Who has not spent great swathes of time in discussion about what you’d do with the money and how it would seemingly make all your dreams come true? And yet you have to ask why it is that lottery companies never use their winners to advertise their product beyond the honeymoon, cork popping, hand over of the outsize cheque.
Once you begin to follow up the lives of all these lucky folk you begin to realise why. Their lives invariably descend into chaos with ubiquitous stories of divorce, addiction, mental breakdown, murder and suicide. Why is this? Why should you be careful what you wish for? Perhaps the simple answer is that life is not meant to be handed to you on a plate. We just don’t value what we haven’t worked for, but more pertinently, even if our ‘if only’ is realised, its still all about what the ego wants for its own self-consolidation which means that what life would otherwise have had in store for us cannot be realised.
‘Unlived life does not sit idly on the shelf, it will turn round and bite you.’ ML von Franz
When connection to the Self is broken it gets antsy. Hence the advice of the I Ching to maintain an ordinary life for as long as possible. The alternative is a conditional life in denial of the fact that you already contain within you everything needed to realise your essential nature.
In the story of the Golden Fleece, the last impediment to the goal is the Dragon-who never-sleeps, curled around the roots of the tree in which the fleece is hung. I wonder if this devouring monster is not precisely the voice of ‘if only’; the regressive, self pitying, poisonous force which continuously attacks the hero/ine with seductive fantasies of somehow deserving a ‘better’ life, anything other than this shitty life, which then of course consumes the quest inches from its accomplishment. If only weed were legal. If only the government weren’t such bastards. If only I had a better job, better parents, more opportunities. If only I could get so-and-so into bed, if only I had no acne, if only I were a little taller, thinner, better built. Every one of these is a dragon’s tooth sewn into the earth of our being which then rises up to attack and disable even the bravest and most noble.
