Ok - I'll admit I'm a little weird. When I took this picture I thought about my psych days and Carl Jung's concept of the shadow self. "That which we think we are not..." How you project onto others what you really are. Like pro-life people that pass judgement but bomb abortion clinics... what makes them any different for killing??? I'll leave the Jungian concept for someone else to cover though. ;-)
I'd rather talk about this shadow story... I was reading about the Vietnamese legend of the Lady of Nam Xuong. She was pregnant and her husband was sent off to war. She had the baby and raised the boy by herself for three years. The boy was always scared at night and would cry for his father. The mother would get up, light the oil lamp and try to console him. When the husband returned from battle the wife went to the market to buy an offering for the ancestral altar to celebrate his homecoming. The father asked the boy why he didn't call him Papa. The boy said "you're not my Papa - my Papa comes every night and my Mama cries with him and talks to him... when she sits down he sits down. When she lies down, he lies down."
When the husband heard this he thought she was unfaithful and would not talk to her or look at her. He would not let her kneel at the altar because he thought she betrayed him and the ancestors. He would go and get drunk and not come home for days. Finally she couldn't take it any longer and jumped in the river and killed herself.
When the husband heard the wife had died, he came back to care for the boy. That night he lit the lamp and the boy said "Mister, Papa came home - he's here!" and pointed to the shadow on the wall.
That was the truth of the child - his father came home every night and the mother would talk to him and let the boy talk to him so he wasn't sad but the father had the wrong perception and thought the wife was unfaithful. He did not ask her who this "man" was that would come every night and she did not approach him and ask why he was treating her so badly.
It's really all about misperceptions... and miscommunication.
The Shadow knows the truth... but do you?
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