If you are an acorn, you can only become an oak tree.
A tiny post about what it means to become yourself.
Over the last few years after The Empath’s Journey came out, I have dived even deeper into Carl Jung’s work. One of the big ideas in Jung’s work is Individuation.
Individuation is the life-long process of becoming our own unique self, distinct from others.
What’s different and especially beautiful about the idea of individuation is that it is very different from the popular idea of “You can be anything you want to be.”
Although being anything we want to be is a positive idea on one level, it neglects the fact that we can REALLY only become something that already exists as a potential inside us.
If we were to talk poetically, if you start off as an acorn, you can only become an oak tree, not a redwood tree or a mango tree.
If you are a tomato plant, you can’t grow roses and vice versa.
This sense of a unique pattern existing inside us and shaping who we can be at our very best is what individuation is all about. And what makes this idea so beautiful and unique.
We are limited by our potential, but we are also shaped by it.
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which TEDx speaker Andy Mort calls “a fascinating insight into the life of a highly sensitive person.”
Find out more about Ritu on her website at walkingthroughtransitions.com.
Note: A version of this post first appeared on Ritu’s website.
This is such a thought-provoking post. One the one hand, especially after reading a lot lately about determinism, I agree with this idea because there do seem to be highly deterministic biological realities at work in our lives and so there are constraints to who/how we can be. But, on the other hand, I'm thinking about the way that people sometimes talking about humans having both "hardware" and "software" in the sense that we are highly acculturated beings and a given cultural influence can dictate our personal evolution and self-expression. So, if I am actually an acorn, would I be the same oak tree growing up in 1600s China as I would be in 2000s NYC? Probably not, right? But is there still some core acorn-ness to me? It seems like there is but I'm not sure exactly what it is.