Until you make the unconscious conscious, wrote Carl Jung, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

The process of self-discovery can never be finished, can never be brought to an end. It is not true that analysis or therapy or spiritual counseling brings the task of self-knowledge and self-awareness to a happy end. It is merely a station on the road. The road never ends.

New experiences every day add to the knowledge of the healer and the seeker. They invariably happen when I least expect them. I learn something about myself every day, for many years things I did not like, more and more some things that I do.

Curiously, I think of our porch, a template for change, a mirror of our lives at a given time. Monday, all the flowers died, their stems black and browning, oases of beauty suddenly turned stark and ugly. The rocking chairs are gone, into the barn. The cats have found other places to sit. Wood piles replace them, storm logs for dark and storm and bitterly cold nights.

A new dog joins Red, waiting for the signal to go to work. She was not in the Spring photograph of the porch.

The picture is different, every time, just like my life. Every day, I ask myself what it is that I learned today. I learned how to be honest, to continue the process of opening up. I met with a friend, I wanted to know how to trust him. So I asked him how, something I did not know how to do.

Recently, someone I thought of as a friend became unhappy with me, and told me I needed to get help because it was well known that I had no friends. It was an ugly thing to hear from someone I thought of as a friend, but who was not. Earlier this year, a new and close friend took  his own life, and I wondered once more, at times in a selfish way, about this idea of friendship, whether it was a myth.

I learned that I don’t want a lot of friends, or need them. I cherish my time alone, I cherish my time with Maria, on the farm, with my camera and keyboard, with the half-dozen people I call friends and whom I have come to trust. This change has been slow and gradual, stations on the road. A few years ago, the ugly message would have disturbed me, I would have wondered what it was that I did to elicit such a message.

Now, I feel sad for the person who sent such a message, it has nothing much to do with me. I beat myself up for so long about so many things, I am learning to accept myself, I love my life and work every day to earn the love of a person who loves and accepts me.

Today, I understand that life is like this, , self discovery is never finished, it can never end. A healthy person would have communicated their displeasure or concern in a very different way. A friend would have done that in a different way. It isn’t always my fault.

I have learned to be careful with this idea of celebrity. I am not a famous person, but some people see me in that way, and it can often be a problem for them, and for me. I have learned to separate it from my relationships with others. I know what they sometimes wonder, I have heard it enough: am I stuck up, too big for my britches? Do they need to take me down a peg like the old sheriff in Dodge when a gunman shows up? Do they feel judged or rejected in some way that I do not grasp? Do they feel judged by me?

I am a person who often makes people uncomfortable, and I think I know why. Because people have always made me uncomfortable, and life is a mirror, we reflect one another.

I have learned this: everything that upsets me about others teaches me something about myself.

And I have learned this: you cannot have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person. What is wrong is to keep trying, to fail to learn what healthy means, what boundaries are, that cruelty and anger are drama, not friendship or community. I have learned  to walk away from things that feel unsafe or uncomfortable for me.

Self-discovery is important to me, I ask myself every night what is it that I learned today. I have learned that the person I most have to know and trust is me. The changing landscape on my porch reflects my life it is a mirror and a place of contemplation. As it changes, I change with it.

I am on the road, it never ends.