The Innocent
Archetypes
Dear Reader,
Happy 2025. May the year bring you more love, more friends, and lots of great opportunities. Thank you for being here. I hope you’ll grab a cup of tea and settle down to read this letter.
My writing started to slow down in November even as my non-writing life picked up pace. Initially, I thought I couldn’t write because I was too busy doing other things (IRL, like the kids say) and not spending enough time writing. But, that wasn’t true. I still sat down to write everyday. I still journaled extensively, filling up page after page, but when it came to more formal writing, one written with the intent to publish (for the newsletter and other projects), there was a general haziness, and everything took twice as long as it normally did. And then, almost without my noticing, a quiet, silvery fog descended, shrouding the words. I wasn’t sure if it was a natural tapering in the creative process or if I’d hit some roadblock like the Inner Critic choking off words before they hit the page. I wanted to push through the fog, but I was also reminded of the following quote from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories on the Cycles of Creativity.
All creativity is a cycle, not a singular event with no past and no future. But a cycle that has that quickening and rising to a Zenith and begins to decline and falls into a death and then an incubation, a holding or waiting period, and once again a quickening and then a rebirth. And this process continues over and over again. And it is this cycle that is right, and proper and cohesive and sacred.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories on the Cycles of Creativity
This quote, describing life cycles as much as cycles of creativity, makes me think of raindrops falling on the surface of a lake. It’s an image I’m repeatedly drawn to because it offers a glimpse of the dizzying number of cycles and spirals we might be part of, our own and that of others.
We get so used to the ‘quickening and rising to a Zenith’ and certainly, that’s the part which is valued and celebrated, and the ‘decline’ and ‘holding or waiting period’ only appears important as a prelude to some inevitable rising. Maybe that relentless hope is part of being human. Since I’ve written more in the last two years than I have in decades, I decided to honor the time as marking the end of one creative cycle, and hopefully, the beginning of another.
Reader, I am very happy to be back and I hope you’ve missed reading Ten Thousand Journeys.
The Innocent Archetype
Imagine you are back in a time before the internet and smartphones. You’re traveling by train. It’s about 4 in the afternoon, and you are a few hours into your journey. You’re going back home after attending a favorite cousin’s wedding. You had a great time at the wedding, reconnecting with close and extended family members while also trying to ignore their teasing about how it’s surely your turn next. You had a great time, but you are happy to be going home. It’s a 14-hour train ride, but you don’t mind. You’ve already ordered your favorite train dinner, a spicy vegetable biryani with raita, to be delivered around 7:30 PM when the train stops at one of the bigger stations. The tea vendor has just made his way to your seat, and you gratefully accept a small cup of hot cardamom chai from him and settle back comfortably, your eyes closing. Immediately and almost compulsively, your eyes open, and for what seems like the hundredth time, your gaze drifts to the young woman sitting next to the window, diagonally across from you. The sun which was almost directly overhead when you got on the train, has shifted and is now shining its warm light on her. She is probably in her early twenties, a few years younger than you. Her glossy black hair is plaited and draped over her left shoulder. She is dressed in shades of pink, looking for all the world like a rosebud about to burst into blossom. She’s sitting straight, her smiling face raised to accept the benevolent sunlight. She reminds you of someone, though you can't quite place the resemblance. You close your eyes, suddenly feeling grumpy, cold, and a little tired.
According to the dictionary an archetype is a “typical example of something”. The word comes from the Greek arkhetupon which apparently means “something moulded first as a model.” Jungian psychology describes an archetype as a universal, autonomous template or cluster of behaviors, patterns, or symbols.
“The Innocent is the part of us that trusts life, ourselves, and other people. It is the part that has faith and hope, even when on the surface things look impossible. It is the part of us that “keeps the faith” in whatever it is we are hoping for. It is also the part that allows us to trust others enough to learn from them, so it is essential to learning the basic skills of life and work.
We all begin in innocence, totally cared for inside our mother’s womb.
-Carol S. Pearson, Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World
As a writer, I’ve tried to capture some essence of the Innocent archetype in the above scene. The words, phrases, and ideas I associate with the Innocent archetype are: idealism; the belief/assurance that one will be received by the world; a lack of doubt in the world or in one’s abilities; optimism; bravery; the idea that the world is there for you; a belief in happily-ever-after or in fantasy; the quality of if only I show up, my heart in my hand, optimism radiating from me, everything will work out, and there will be a happy ending. The Innocent is probably all of us when we are young though it can be a person for the entirety of their lives. It can be a stage of our life or we might be Innocents in some area of life.
I’d love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the Innocent archetype? And, if you’d like to share, how would you portray it?
Best,
Priya
My favorite innocent was Chauncey the Gardener, in an old film, Being There. He is literally a gardener, but his words (taken wrongly by everyone) become like beams of light. All double entendre to the listener, but to poor Chauncey, he's merely speaking. It was a classic and Peter Sellers. In more modern day films, it would be a Forrest Gump character (much less to my liking). The Sellers role was top drawer and he truly was 'the innocent.'
Glad your back, Priya.
Firstly, I really liked your bit at the start about creativity as a cycle. And I like that you allowed yourself time to let that cycle so it’s thing. I feel I’m going through a bit of a slowing down part in my own writing and I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but reading your words helped.
And secondly, the idea of the innocent archetype is one I find really interesting and it instantly made me think of when I first got into skateboarding and how fresh and new it was. I didn’t know the names of the tricks, I didn’t know anything about the culture, it was all so pure and completely about play — I loved that time. :)