Life's Delicate Structures

Soul of Adulthood: Opening the Doors...
by John Friel, Ph.D., Linda Friel

Book Description

Adulthood is a choice. It does not happen because we reach a certain age or income level. Adulthood happens when we choose to pass through the many interconnected doors that lead to the deeper realms of our own souls. The passage of time and the events around us may propel us toward maturity, but it is up to us to pass through these doors.

When you read this book, you will embark on a journey through many layers of soulfulness, including Struggle, Resistance, Entitlement, Disappointment, Narcissism, Trade-offs, Appreciation, Love, Power, Graciousness, Tradition, Integrity and Victimhood. Adulthood is a quality of soul that is chosen and earned through the very deepening struggles that life offers us as we progress from birth to death. We can engage these struggles anytime until the day we die. It is never too late to grow up.

LIFE'S DELICATE STRUCTURES

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais, 1821

There are roughly 5.5 billion people on this planet today, and it is most intriguing to realize that we are all nearly identical. It is a simple scientific observation that our genetic, psychological, social, emotional and spiritual similarities far outweigh our differences. The brilliant cross-cultural work of Jerome Kagan on perception, of Jean Piaget on cognitive development and of Erik Erikson on the development of personality shows that humans are human whether we are primitive or industrialized, male or female, African, Asian or Caucasian, tall or short. Scientists now tell us that our genetic makeup is remarkably similar to that of one-celled animals.

The paradox is that each of us also feels so unique that we spend the greater part of our lives trying to explain ourselves to each other in the hope that we can be heard and understood, as if no one else could possibly know what it's like to live inside our skin. We are fascinated with ourselves. Our art, literature, philosophy, psychology, theology, history and science are all about us—descriptions of us, symbolic expressions of us and explanations of us. If we can agree on nothing else, we seem to agree that one of the primary threads that runs throughout all of human existence is that of struggle. We struggle to live, we struggle with each other over physical and emotional resources, we struggle to avoid pain, to find happiness and to make sense of our lives. And despite all of our seeming uniqueness, there is a form to our internal struggles rivaling the intricacy and beauty of the most complex crystalline structures. These struggles and the structures in which they are embedded are what grace our lives with uniqueness, meaning and depth.

It is our belief that each of us struggles with the same general themes of birth, death, survival, connection and separateness, and that our struggles exist in layers. Where we differ are in the arenas in which we play out our struggles and in the metaphors that we use to symbolize the important elements of our lives. One man struggles much of his life to find a good love while another struggles with a life-threatening illness. One woman struggles to find a cure for cancer while another struggles to resolve the personal horrors of the Holocaust. One struggles in the arena of world politics while another struggles to find peace within the four walls of his own home. Each of us searches for the same things in life, but with metaphorical meaning systems and in arenas that are our very own.

Layers Of Struggle

The human soul is layered and faceted with endless manifestations, which is why we are so complex, so fascinating. Struggles exist in layers because our lives, our meaning systems and our very core selves are layered and faceted. Some people look at each other and see only a surface, which is why we are sometimes so shocked by others' behavior. A neighbor commits suicide, a famous person kills a friend, our favorite minister admits to having affairs, and we feel our very foundations shake. When all we respond to is the surface layer of someone, we miss their truth and depth. And while there is no way that we would have the time or energy to look into each human being with the depth of a close friend or lover, if we do not look deeply into ourselves and at least one other person, we miss out on a crucial aspect of life.

Social and political pundits struggle with these layers all the time as they try to simplify life for us in a 90-second television analysis. They might say, “Well, he was obviously a fraud, rotten to the core.” But is that all he was? Or does it simply take too much time to say, “He was a fraud in this aspect of his life, he was honorable in that aspect, he was confused in yet another, and perhaps a saint in yet another?” Each human being has multiple layers. A woman may work hard because she likes nice material things, but she may also work hard because she enjoys her work, and deep down inside she may work hard because she truly cares about improving the human race. It is not a contradiction to say that she likes nice things and also cares deeply about humanity, but some people would find this paradox incomprehensible.

Most major theories of human development imply these layers as well. For example, in Erik Erikson's stages of development we don't just have a trust versus mistrust crisis when we are newborns. Questions of trust versus mistrust appear in new forms from then onward, right up until the day we die. Each stage or crisis through which we pass incorporates transformed versions of the ones before it so that by the time we are struggling with intimacy versus isolation in early adulthood we carry along inside of it redefined issues of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence and identity.

Research on adult development tells us that as we move from one era to another in our lives we are challenged to make sense of all that has gone before. When we are 23 and moving out into the world, we look back and realize that something is ending and something else is opening up, producing sadness and exhilaration. As this process begins, we struggle with which parts of the past to embrace, which parts to mourn, which parts to change and which parts to put on hold. With new eyes, more mature eyes, we look back and say, “Oh, I once believed that everything my parents said and did was good, or bad; but now I can sort through it all and see that it isn't that simple. Some of it was good, some not so good and some I can take or leave.” Life is so wonderful, because at each crossroad we are offered yet another chance to gather up all the loose threads and baffling paradoxes and make some deeper sense of them. Life becomes a beautiful ongoing mystery filled with new discoveries about old events, all the way along, which is the antithesis of boredom.

A Soulful Love Affair

We knew a man who had a longstanding love affair, but it wasn't with another person. Anyone who knew of his love and admiration for his wife could have determined that. His secret love affair, known only tangentially to those close to him, was with the place where he grew up. And the memories, images, ghosts, contradictions and longings that haunted him as they tumbled out of his unconscious mind were a seemingly random amalgamation of sights, sounds, tastes and textures from that timeless space within his own soul that had been carefully carved and formed during his childhood. Over the years the place of his youth had taken up residence, had etched itself into his very wholeness, where it served him as an intricate arena for the resolution and integration of deeper and deeper parts of himself as he grew older and matured. His passion for life as he was now living it struggled with his deeper urges to return home in some kind of metaphorical, if not literal way, releasing infinitesimal waves of hope and regret, sadness and joy, disappointment and exhilaration, and pain; and he was sustained and enriched by them, as seen in this more recent journal entry he shared with us.

I can finally respect it rather than fear it. For the most part, this struggle rests comfortably, with elegance and grace, in a delicate, nearly invisible corner of my life, its tension balanced tautly like the strings of a violin. When it becomes too tight and complains, it does so with kindness. It is courteous and civilized, knowing when it isn't welcome but willing to share in my life when I am ready. When it feels neglected, it nudges me and asks to be heard. This arena of struggle has so many twists and turns to it that over the years it has developed into a complex ally filled with unexpected messages and meanings for me. On its very surface, on its most concrete, literal, sensory plane, it is made up of my ambivalent feelings about where I would like to live. Part of me loves where I am, and part of me longs to move back to the place of my youth.

My more peaceful childhood memories constantly tweak and poke and prod me with hypnotically deep sensory impressions of soft, warm, dry summer air infused with the earthy scent of eucalyptus and bay laurel. As I breathe the memories deeper and deeper into my soul, the smell of the hot, dry powdery earth mixed with manzanita and sage surround me, engulf me, take command of my being. A perfect blue sky fills my consciousness with an almost erotic warmth as I feel the hot, comforting rays of the sun first touch my skin and then pass into my body, where they circulate and gently soothe places of loneliness and fear that reside deep inside me.

A bird sings in the back yard, jarring me out of my sensory trance, and I continue about my daily tasks while another part of me is left to feel and sort through the tiny aftershocks and lingering reverberations of a sadness, or a loss, or a hope, or an anticipation and excitement about what was, what might have been, what is or what could be. I long to go back, and then I am immeasurably grateful that I am already home.

The Surface Structure

Oftentimes, when we first begin to wrestle with issues of adulthood, the surface of our lives is disrupted and our forays into our arenas of struggle are confused and intense, like a foot soldier charging onto a battlefield with energy and determination but lacking the deeper comprehension of the events at hand. Our metaphors and life images may intrude into our consciousness with the force of an inexperienced burglar breaking a window or a lock, and when we come back to the here and now it might be with a startled jolt, as if we were being yanked out of a sound sleep by a disgruntled parent angry that we were late for school.

And so, as is quite normal, rather than reflecting upon what was contained in his soul, this man spent most of his 20s acting out his struggle by returning home over and over, trying to recapture something on one visit, trying to undo something on another, but always being in motion enough that the clatter drowned out the faint voices coming from the next layer down inside of himself. The deeper meanings and exquisite intricacies of life came in crude bursts and fits, evaporating quickly, leaving no trail, no evidence of having been there. But then in his late twenties he had kneaded and worked the surface of his struggle enough that something began to change.

Something has been happening inside of me. The first sign came to me as I jogged through my old neighborhood. As I turned the corner and came upon the little house nestled among hedges and old shade trees and bathed in late morning sunlight, I felt a timeless, disconnected, painful emptiness fill my chest and radiate into my stomach; and as the last faint traces of it receded back into my depths, something inside of me took note that this was a moment of historical significance. Since returning home from this vacation I am noticing many negative feelings bubbling up to the surface and creeping into my conversations. I speak with regret and disdain for how my home town has changed in recent years and of how blind I have been to its many shortcomings when I was a child growing up there. The natural beauty of the area is terribly overrated by the natives and the people are as shallow and as lost as some say, I tell myself. I wonder how I could have been so unaware all of these years.

At about the same time he began to experience intense disruptions in his work and relationships. Painful memories were extruded from deep inside of him, bursting forth with a blinding fury that wrenched his foundation from beneath him. He cried, he was angry, he felt despair and confusion, he went in and out of painful relationships, he denied that anything was wrong and then he crashed into the depths once more. Down and down he fell, spiraling through a maelstrom of torment, fear and loneliness. His dreams and memories were no longer warm and soothing as they had once been. Ghosts and memories of pain held sway. The enveloping magic of night that he once experienced became a time of lonely darkness.

From somewhere inside, a sharp flash shattered the calm with an image of a little child laying in his bed, listening to fighting, adults out of control, home no longer safe. The fear he had carefully tucked away for so many years reared up from the depths and began to strangle him. He screamed in terror, silently, alone, inside of his soul. And then from an even deeper place within him, hidden far away for safety and protection, another part of the struggle raised up briefly, told him that he would endure, and then returned to its place of safety. Gradually, he could see that his life was deepening and that his pain was beginning to subside. The emotional storms were shorter and less intense. He was now ready to move through another layer of self and to open one of the doors to adulthood.

Grieving

As we move from one stage of our lives to another, we also move into the next deeper layer of our souls. It is a painful time, a time of confusion and searching. But it is also an exciting time filled with the promise of better things to come, a time of consolidation, integration and understanding. We let go of one part of our meaning system and open up to a new part.

One day I became aware that both parts of the struggle had finally been revealed to me, and I knew I was ready for the hard part. I was scared, and on my next visit to my birthplace, my ambivalence was palpable, and I was awash in sadness and a pervasive unease. The furious battle on the surface was nearing its conclusion and the deeper, more peaceful struggle beneath was preparing to emerge. I grieved the loss that was upon me, the loss of childhood hopes and dreams, of the textures and sights and sounds and fragrances that had entranced me and sustained me these many years.

I watched the fog creep over the crests and down the sides of the coastal mountains, and it felt ominous, cold and lonely, instead of comforting, soothing and mystical as it often had been in the past. I looked out at the glorious sun sinking into the ocean at day's end and felt my spirit fade into a dark, hopeless void. The damp, cool forest, permeated with the musky smell of redwood bark and ferns, threatened to pull me into a tangled underworld of despair and emptiness. I struggled gallantly with a deep loneliness as my dignity began to push its way up from the rich, dark earth beneath my feet.

Lunch with an old friend warmed my spirit for a brief moment, connecting me with the roots that brought life to my soul. Time with my dying parents heightened the struggle. Their lives were flickering, running out, and I resisted accepting them for who they were. Part of me hoped that they would become something more that I still needed. I saw two old people who were argumentative, childish and unhappy. I felt disappointed and betrayed as the sadness kept seeping through the cracks in the layers of my unconscious. Outside, the fog flowed effortlessly into the bay around cliffs and rocks, beneath bridges, along roadways, between piers and pilings, insinuating itself into my life without resistance, leaving no damage, no pain, no scars, until it was embedded in the physical world around me with as much permanence as the buildings and tunnels and highways now enshrouded in mist.

A Christmas Day cracked into consciousness, shocking and jarring the dreamy, disconnected emptiness with a vivid memory of a cold, rainy winter day, new bicycles, wrappings and bows strewn about the floor, pretend giggles and laughter from a child who was confused, lonely, and spent from the intensity of a holiday celebration punctuated by extremes of fantasy and unacknowledged family pain. If only someone had asked, “Are you okay?”

The fog slowly released its grip from the cracks and crevices, cypress and redwoods, harbors and inlets, making its unpredictable decision to return to its home far out at sea. To me, the fog is a soothing mystery, an omen, a symbol, a comforting universal presence, like the spirit. Fog comes and goes in endless rhythms, with limitless variations. Sometimes it creeps in slowly with thin, blind fingers that search for entrances and openings under a magical moonlit sky, carefully lingering low atop the water for a day or so and then receding just as unobtrusively as it had come. The next time it might roar in from the ocean, riding cold, gusty winds high over the mountaintops, pushing deep across the bay, blocking the sun and sky with boldness and strength. The cooling, soothing fog is there to enclose all things in a shroud of reflection, to tie up loose ends, to connect all things that exist separately during the clear light of day, to heal.

Releasing And Deepening

The next day, the early morning sunlight sparkled and danced on the needles of the tall sugar pines outside the window as the sun blazed on the horizon. The man's retina worked furiously to send the signals of warmth and awakening to his cerebral cortex while the deeper recesses of his soul struggled to receive the message being sent. The last trails of mist from the previous day along with the exquisitely reconnected ghosts and images from his past gave the sunlight a dry, grassy hillside on which to play. He walked outside and let the sun warm him as a bright blue sky opened up above the quiet mountains and vast expanse of sea. The door was now open.

When I talked gently with my parents today, I saw two people who had managed their lives with brilliance and courage, taking risks, making vows and struggling gallantly to live and die with meaning and purpose. My heart went out to them. My history was connected to their history, my pain and fears were connected to theirs, my depth had come from the generations of those who went before me with all of their wisdom and ignorance, bitterness and disease, sorrow and ecstasy. And these two old people, their bodies weak and their minds beginning to fog, were the last of those previous generations. As I struggled with these contradictions, something deep within me began to open, and then it was time for me to return home.

The edges of this tiny opening gratefully and willingly began to loosen and crumble in his early 30s as his soul deepened, allowing the surface struggle between him and his childhood pain to slowly dissolve like the skin of a serpent being shed to make room for new growth. As this happened, he was faced with a new form of the struggle, with a new face and new depth.

The question was no longer, “Are you okay?” Now the question was, “Who are you, and what is your part in all of this?” Even more disconcerting and exciting was the gradual awareness that the question could only come from the deeper parts of himself. As he moved toward the inner layers of his soul, he found himself moving into the present more, and for the first time in his life, he was able to make out the faint outlines of self, and to perceive and comprehend the differences between self and self-absorption.

The Presence Of Angels

As we continue to mature throughout adulthood, our struggles find a comfortable residence within our core self, and we are able to appreciate the incredibly complex structures of personality and life that we have constructed over the years. And we can see that even at its most surface layer, during our early 20s and before, the struggles have always been inside of us, far down in our very souls. Where we live, how we choose to structure our lives, our friends and partners, all of these are matters of personal preference. What matters most in terms of life structure and maturity is that we can eventually respond from our own acknowledged depths rather than from the pain of what may have been done to us.

We continue to entertain these inner struggles, and with every passing year, our souls take on more complexity, more shape and definition, more clarity, more wholeness. As the struggle at one level nears completion, we watch with excitement and anxiety as the features of the next layer reveal themselves. The longer this process continues the less disruptive the struggles become, and the more subtle, exquisite and ecstatic they become. For example, one year this man's struggle with where to live revealed to him that he missed his father. He had been so busy with the funeral arrangements and the other details of his life that he hadn't taken the time to honor the good things about his father that he had always appreciated. A few years later, his struggle showed him how hard he had tried all of his life to be responsible and that he needed those close to him to acknowledge it. A few years later still, in one of his more vivid encounters with these ghosts and images and longings from his past, he realized that the fear of scarcity, of not having enough, was pushing him to try to live too much instead of simply being in his life.

Recently, during one of those more open, tumultuous struggles that occasionally visited him, he was given a gift beyond compare. As the layer of the previous struggle began to be sloughed off, he uncovered and began to comprehend faith—the faith that the intensity of our struggles wasn't created to hurt us, but to inform us, and that the confusion takes the form of a tornado at times so that we can feel where we still hurt. It teaches us that struggle is a generous part of life and that the frightening, confusing battles appear only when necessary, only with the intensity that is necessary, and never with the desire to harm. The frightening part of the struggle finally had a place within him to rest.

While on a walk one day I was surprised and suddenly overcome with wonder when I thought I spied the little sprites and spirits frolicking in the woods with their dancing faces and soulful eyes, filled with magic and mischief. Perhaps it was only the chickadees singing in the trees or the puppy playing with the pine cones, I laughed to myself. I wasn't too sure. But my soul was filled with mirth. Soon after that I felt the presence of an angel. I was worried about money. Soon after my father died my wife had a dream in which my father appeared to her and told her to let me know that I had all that I needed. She awoke from the dream and shared it with me, and her dream became a part of my soul and a part of my struggle, and it deepened my love for her beyond measure.

I continue to struggle with my fears, but from that day forward I was visited by the ghosts and images and memories and longings of that mysterious morning when she shared the dream with me, and every time I look into her eyes or see her sparkling smile across the room, I shiver and know there are angels. She graces my life, blesses my children, challenges my fears and warms my heart.

Throughout every day, across every year and within every decade, I have become part of her struggles and she has become part of mine. The depth of her dreams collides with the power of mine. We laugh and cry and yell and love across a universe of dishes and paperwork and children and bills. When our deeper fears ask to be heard at the same time, our struggle materializes into a whirlwind of pain and confusion, filling us with anxiety and doubt. And then one of us feels the presence of an angel, and then the other.

Between Birth And Death

We are born, and we die. In between these two great events we are given a life that is punctuated by struggle, change, joy, heartache, ecstasy, hurt, sadness, loss and exhilaration. The slice of one man's life that you just finished reading is actually very ordinary, although some might not be comfortable with that analysis because of the particular nature of his struggles. Although the arenas and backdrops may be different on the surface, each of us has struggles very much like his. Life is like that. It is a marvelous gift that by its very nature asks each one of us to face challenges of progressive growth and deepening. Yet as each life becomes more complex and full, it also becomes more ordinary, which is one of the wonderful mysteries that is shared by each person who moves through childhood and into adulthood. It is up to us to choose at each step along the way whether or not we are ready and willing to accept these challenges.

Learning to be in life fully, as an adult, is what this book is about. Each of the remaining chapters stands alone and can be read in any order that pleases the reader. Each represents one of the innumerable issues or challenges that greets us as we live in and create our lives; and as we struggle with any one of these issues, we, like the man you just read about, are allowed to experience life with more depth, gratitude and grace. We are allowed to enter the soul of adulthood when we make the conscious choice to pass through each of the doors described in these chapters.

As you continue reading, we invite you to view struggle not as something to be avoided at all cost, but as that which truly sustains and gives meaning to life. We invite you to open your hearts and minds to the challenges and complexities represented by each of these doors, and as you do, we wish you a generous journey of filling your soul.

© 1995 John C. Friel and Linda D. Friel

About the Author

John Friel, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in St. Paul, Minnesota; Director of the St. Paul / Minneapolis Clearlife / Lifeworks Clinic, an intensive, short-term treatment program for adult children, co-dependency, addiction and compulsivity issues. Dr. Friel earned his B.A. in psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1969, and his Ph.D. in psychology from West Virginia University in 1976. He is a nationally recognized author, trainer, speaker and consultant in the areas of dysfunctional family systems, co-dependency, adult child issues, stress and addictions.

Along with her husband, Linda Friel is known throughout the U.S., Canada, England, and Ireland for her therapeutic and training expertise in the areas of family systems, survivors of unhealthy childhoods, depression, anxiety, addictions and personality disorders. She is cofounder and national director of the ClearLife/Lifeworks Clinic, which is a special four-day therapy program to help people move beyond the painful patterns of childhood shortages.