On my Yin & Yang

 

On my Yin & Yang

 

I never much liked the guy. He was grandstander. Still he was one of ‘us’/the community & as I walked to the laundromat, we walked together & talked. Then he said to me “you know what your problem is, Mal?” I thought ‘this’ll be good,’ sarcastically to myself. But I said “ok, what’s my problem?” He said “you’re a sensitive guy, who grew in a place where you had to act tough.” ‘Shit,’ I thought, this guy’s onto something. Today I mourn the beautiful boy. He had no chance. Life was too rough. Home, school, culture. Still, I’m not sure he’s meant to stand much of a chance. I have mixed feelings. When I’m at home & feeling gentle, I feel really gentle. One thing you mightn’t know about me, if you only know me socially, is that I’m a really good listener, once trust is established. I like my Yin side. I’m sad that the world is so brutal that I must gruff my voice. In private, I can be quiet. I can cry. I can nurture. I can love. I can yield. I can float. I can bathe. I can care. I once had a learning difficulty student write a note to the teaching assistant that if they could be like anyone when they grew up, they would be like me. They said it was because I was “kind & patient.” That was the best of teaching. I love kids. They bring out the best in me.

But my other side, is that I can be boarish, rude, impatient, angry, aggressive, & like all people, there is violence brewing there. I’ve found it necessary to be like that in hostile or combative environments. There’s also the nervous energy & my anxiety, but there’s also pleasure in, figuratively speaking, ‘flexing my muscles.’ There’s also my voice, which is loud, like my father’s was. Trained as a singer & a speaker. There’s an explosive pleasure in percussive verbal eruptions & competitiveness. Of course, there’s also a need to protect yourself & loved ones & sometimes strangers by putting on your ‘body armour’ & attacking. The vicious dog in me. Pepper my late male greyhound taught me a lot. Our too dogs were like our spirit animals. Rhonda the beta dog, so loving, so loyal & Pepper the volatile alpha. But you know, as the years grew on, Pepper mellowed. He was a rescue dog & an ex-racer, who’d never lived in a home before. & one sees how situations & relationships create our personalities, as much as genes. Still there are times I thrill at my Yang.

I had a dream the other night with both dogs, where Rhonda, symbolic of gentleness, sensitivity, was scared of eating, because she was intimidated by Pepper, symbolic of aggressiveness. Jung argues that everyone in our dreams is us & so perhaps the dream was telling me that my sensitive Yin/feminine is frightened of my aggressive Yang/masculine. That there is an imbalance there. That guy I talked with on the way to the laundromat was close. Travelling further it suggests that I’m frightened of kind, gentle women, because I fear my volatile maleness could become violent & I’d destroy them. It’s part of the reason I choose aggressive women. Then I’m the beta. But that has its problems too. When I was two, I showered with my father the morning after he’d beaten the family the night before & I vowed that I’d never be like that. So far, so good. The downside is that I supress my rage & it eats me up & unconsciously impacts negatively in my relationships. Born of a tension that I’m just ‘holding on’. It impacts my honesty, because I’m holding something back, if a lot of the time unconsciously or at least burying it deep down in my psyche.

I don’t know how to end this. It is a work in progress. Finding balance is hard, & in addition to the internal work on must do, the world keeps throwing grenades to trigger us into fight/flight. I once saw a woman, as a vision in a meditation decades ago. She was lovely & she smiled calmly & warmly. I guess she’s my ideal. But I’m not ready for her yet.

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.