(A I didn’t plagiarize this; I did. Well, not really, if I give props to who did write this. His name is Steven Pressfield from his Writing Wednesday newsletter. I’m only using a passage as a prompt to tackle the same issue he does, but hopefully from a different perspective.)

[To begin with, I am not in any sort of ‘therapy.’ I am not seeing a psychotherapist. That being stated, let’s move on to what Steven says about his Wilderness Passage]

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Most of us are familiar with Jung’s term “individuation.” It was, Jung always said, the goal and the object of any therapy exercise.

In “the talking cure,” we work with a psychotherapist to explore the content of our unconscious to strangle away all false or delusory selves to ultimately arrive at our true individuated selves.

In real life, the world kicks the crap out of us until we arrive at the same place.

The person in therapy seeks to answer the question, “Who am I?” And to take it to the next level: “How do I become that? How do I become who I already am?”

A Wilderness Passage is a real-world version of psychotherapy in our real lives for ourselves or in our fiction for a character we have created. It’s the psychotherapy of hard knocks.

Are we struggling with anxiety, depression, isolation, PTSD, and addiction (of all kinds)? Are we a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a business? All these, if you ask me, are versions of the same question:

“Who am I?”

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As I recently stated about myself, I am not broken, nor am I in recovery. I am exploring a path that, as I travel it, will determine if I can accomplish what I am setting out to learn.

I have ‘A Story’ that I have written. Considering all its parameters, it’s a good story, maybe a fantastic account. But that doesn’t make me a writer.

I also have always wanted to own my own business. Do I, at 78, have the wherewithal to put that want to into practice?

Neither of those two purposes is asking the question, “Who Am I?” I am not looking to find myself. I am who I am. Now who I am to somebody else might be ‘individuated’ but its for them to determine, not I. Now to the young lady I in a moments notice hurriedly drove down to Union Station I might be her knight in shining armor. To my grandkids, I’m Granpa. For my fledgling marigold sprouts, 18 of em’, I’m a fledgling gardener. But in all these things, I am me. No mystery exists.