Thank you for this!
I enjoy your take on the story and agree that much of our life we spend running. I vaguely remember a quote of Jungs that goes something like “ all the anxiety, doubt, second-guessing is just a means to avoid the life we’re meant to live.” (Very loosely paraphrased.)
Had some trouble with the story though as I always saw Jonah as a judgmental dick. The story goes that he avoided Nineveh because he didn’t want them to be saved and even after they repented he was angry that they did.
A couple interesting themes here:
- The God of Jonah is far more compassionate than the God of Job and many of the Old Testament prophets. In this story, God teaches mercy wherein Job, humanity judge’s God’s wrath. It’s an interesting evolution of the god figure.
- This is also one of the rare cases where people simply drop what they’re doing and change their ways. In fact, it may be the only one wherein it happens without any prodding. . . it’s hard to remember them all.
I wonder if this sheds more light on your initial point?
What if part of the shadow of holding ourselves back is actually scorn for the world?
There is clearly the fear of becoming who we are but also perhaps a fear that becoming who we are will change things for the better and that will make things unfamiliar.
The human mind seems to value its familiarity as seen in traumatic relationships the world over.
*I realized after posting this that my thoughts jumped around there at the end. I asked what if its scorn for the world and then jumped back into fear of the unknown, change, and trauma.
Meditating on that shift in thought helped shed some light on my inner process. Thank you for creating articles like these that explore the depths so we all have the opportunity of seeing how we react to them and uncovering some of the shadows that lie beneath.
