“To be healthy, then, has nothing to do with serenity, and less to do with adjustment: to be healthy means to become whole. We can perhaps say that the truly healthy person is the person who is involved in the lifelong process of individuation.”
This quote is by John A. Sanford from his book Healing and Wholeness. Dr. Sanford was a Jungian analyst, Episcopal priest, writer, and presenter. I have read many of his books, and I highly recommend Healing and Wholeness to you as well as his other books.
When reading this quote, one might question why Sanford would say to be healthy has nothing to do with serenity. As he says in his book, he is referring to the idea that some people put forth that having serenity every day should be one’s goal and that feeling that way corresponds to being healthy. Although serenity occurs from time to time for most of us, and is welcome when it does, it is unrealistic to expect to feel that way all or even much of the time. If that were possible, it would mean we wouldn’t experience the many other emotions that are naturally part of being a human being who has feelings, for life includes happenings that cause us to feel various emotions. It is natural that at times we will feel anxiety, fear, grief, and other difficult emotions. And it is also natural that at times we will feel peaceful, content, and joyful.
When we feel grief, anxiety, fear, and other difficult emotions, they are often related to specific life experiences, such as grieving the loss of a loved one, fearing we will not succeed at something that means a lot to us, and feeling anxious when people we care about are struggling and we are limited in how we can help them. Feeling what I’m referring to as difficult emotions not only is part of living life more fully, but also our dealing with whatever is happening that is causing those emotions leads to developing qualities such as perseverance, courage, patience, and empathy. Such experiences are part of the individuation process to which Sanford refers: the lifelong process of becoming the person we were created to be, of becoming whole.
Sanford also discusses how adjustment does not lead to a healthy life. In Healing and Wholeness, he refers to the fact that many people adjust by wanting to fit in and by going along with whatever is expected by the culture they are a part of. The concern here is that the messages to approach life in that way come from certain people in our lives, the media, the internet, etc., rather than from our inner voice. Societal messages lead to sameness rather than to uniqueness, and we were all created to be unique human beings, each of us having our individual life journeys. Also, Sanford points out that there is much about society that is not healthy, so to have adjustment as our goal is to make choices that are limiting and the opposite of health.
Trying to do that which is necessary in order to individuate by following our spiritual path—in other words, taking steps toward becoming the person we were created to be—is not easy. In doing so, there are times when we will feel alone and have doubts. And yet making the effort is often accompanied by a sense of reassurance that we are on our path even as we are going through challenging times, and also by times of genuine joy.