Repetition Compulsions

“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluable. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved but only outgrown.” – Carl Jung

I forget where I ran across this Jung quote, but I remember writing it down in a little book with a rose on the cover when I was eighteen. I've repeated it often since then. It's repeatedly relevant.

Each of us seems to've been put on this planet to work on a particular problem or set of problems. My own perpetual issue has something to do with external vs. internal. Inside out or outside in? Where is the locus of control? What is Self, and what is Other?

Like a person, a relationship is an entity that operates according to its own logic. The only difference is that the “necessary polarity” gets enacted between people. All their interactions are expressions of that polarity. Which is not necessarily a problem.

There are all kinds of things worth doing, and doing again. And yet again.

There are other kinds of things that were stupid once, and just keep on getting stupider.

A lot of repetition compulsions fall somewhere in the middle: whatever it is, I keep doing it because... I Know What's Best for Me (or whatever pat on the back you like to give yourself) – that is, except when it becomes clear that I'm stuck in a pattern that just doesn't work, in fact it totally sucks, but here I am, doing it again anyway, because...God Hates Me (or whatever despairing this-is-my-fate explanation you wish to invoke in these situations).

In any case, whether or not we experience something as a problem seems to be largely a function of attitude.

In a negative frame of mind, we see ourselves as cursed with a Sisyphean task, compelled to keep rolling the same huge boulder up the same unforgiving hill. And every time we think we've finally made it to the top for good, the damn thing flattens us as it rolls back down the slope.

Splat. Whoops. Did it again. Somebody sure screwed up.  Was it me?  Was it you? 

In a more positive frame of mind, we see some improvement. Pick your cliché: Two steps forward, one step back; Variations on a theme, with each repetition incorporating some essential change, a tonal shift in the burden of the song; A seasonal progression, in which each revolution around the same sun brings us to a new place, further along the spiral of possibility.

I think what Jung was getting at was this: We may be stuck with the same boulder and the same hill our whole lives long, but it is in our power to decide that it's a fine day for a little exercise. And as soon as we're not focused on our own resentment, lo & behold: the unexpected pleasures of a pleasant breeze, birdsong, alpine flowers....

Now, what was the problem, again?