alighting into eternal fantasy: the puer aeternus
examining eventual trappings of "the provisional life"
“There is a strange attitude and feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being one is doing this or that, but whether it is a woman or a job, it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about…” Marie-Louise von Franz
In 1953 Walt Disney Studios released a film adaptation of Scottish author J.M. Barrie’s 1911 novel, Peter Pan (also referred to as The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up). Being a child of the ‘90s, this movie was one of the first Disney cartoon movies I remember watching whose plot made a lasting impression on my psyche, not just as a child, but well into adulthood.
For over a decade I’ve dedicated a career to building branding strategies by researching industry trends that I then distill down to human truths to inform a company’s positioning to the market. And since childhood, I’ve constantly found great benefit in observing people’s behaviors and language by leveraging my proximity to their outer world. One might say ethnography is simply in my DNA, as my genuine curiosity for people is something I both enjoy as a passion and apply to survival. That said, I take on a sense of responsibility in maintaining sensible amounts of grace and understanding for life events I myself haven’t experienced but have had the opportunity to witness.
After my last relationship ended at 29, I decided to utilize some of my thirties to foster a sort of fact-finding environment for myself by dating the widest, most diverse range of people in order to truly understand what others tend to crave or need in their romantic and familial lives. I’ve seen films and read books as kickstarters for consciousness expansion, and was led to various philosophies and mythologies supporting the common ‘Peter Pan’ character trope, Carl Jung’s the puer aeternus, the person who never wants to grow up and assume responsibility, who unconsciously denounces adulthood for years, inclusive of meaningful relationships, groundbreaking job opportunities, or life lessons meant to shake them to their core. Since I need to really experience things and people for myself, I embarked on a quest into what Jungian analyst and psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz called “the provisional life” in her book, The Problem With Puer Aeternus.
As a society every culture has bookmarked a person’s various life stages from birth to death — going from one lesser, innocent thing to another more substantiated to signify growth worth capturing through ritual. Jung, who was interested in the connection between the inner life of a person and its outer facilitation, called this an initiation: separation (the shadow), the in-between liminal state (the anima-animus), and return (the self). Many anthropologists around the world, through the cultures and eras, might consider the most recognizable rite of passage in a person as the state from childhood to adulthood. Simply put, people are interested in watching an individual’s ushering into their next initiation phase, so much so that it’s been studied for hundreds (if not, thousands) of years.
Every culture bookmarks a person’s life stages from birth to death to signify growth worth capturing through ritual. Carl Jung, who was interested in the connection between the inner life of a person and its outer facilitation, called this an Initiation.
In the liminal phase, there’s oftentimes a perception that someone is in a disorienting, in-between space that might triggers radical change and reintegration of an anticipating reality. As Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano puts it, “archetypes mobilize psychic energy… It’s appropriate to be in the ‘anteroom’ of life with lots of doors to choose from. But at some point you have to walk through one of those doors, otherwise you risk staying in life’s anteroom. And when you walk through one door, you effectively forego all the others… it may seem like you’re leaving open all kinds of rich possibilities but really you’re making an unconscious sacrifice.”
In the past couple of years I’ve met so many Peter Pans, grown people cosplaying as fully-actualized adults who, after just a few conversations, are clearly still standing in the anteroom of their lives. They’re bypassing their opportunity to be truly present and committed to someone or something good and worthy in hopes that their reservations will lead them to a door with even more abundance and fulfillment. In the meantime, they will continue to evade bearing responsibility, and keep their counterparts in a liminal space just like them, for they still ironically yearn for companionship from the ones they refuse to commit to, to help usher them through what they perceive to be a mistake.
I myself wonder what it is about this Peter Pan trope that unconsciously attracts me. It could be that, perhaps, in my mid thirties and after experiencing what most would probably call a full and fun life, I, too am a victim of my own indecision. An indecision caused by too many presented to me, all of which seem too all-consuming and involved, which would require me to maybe ‘let go’ of other facets of myself that I’m not ready to say goodbye to. After all, Jung’s words teach that we are all a mirror to each other.
How does this make you feel about your own circumstance?