Living is an exercise in yin and yang, good and bad, light and dark, joy and pain...or maybe if you are really unlucky it's like a bowl of mushy lukewarm oatmeal (sorry my friend we have to play the hand we are dealt).
You can't have one without the other.
It's an interesting concept, sometimes a bit disturbing, such as when we see someone we think is all good do something bad. We like to criticize that person if they are a celebrity, politician or particularly a televangelist.
We can't stand hypocrisy...so we say.
The problem is we are all hypocrites to one degree or another. It's the degree and the context of our hyprocrisy that is interesting.
Mental health may be partly about recognizing the light and the dark natures of our personality. If I say I've never had a bad thought I'm either a liar or delusional. If it's the former at least I'm cognizant of the fact that I have some facets of my self that need attending to (like being a liar) before they get too out of control. If it's the latter and I'm not aware that I have bad mixed with the good...that can be scary and dangerous.
Clinical definitions for those people might be sociopath or psychopath, but I'm not really interested in the 1% of the population that might be considered psychopaths, as I am in the everyday Jack or Jane who doesn't have a diagnosis. I also tend to think that if we can label something, and therefore make it something that applies to someone else, then we don't have to contemplate our own lives, and you know what they say about the unexamined life.
A couple of quick anecdotes -
I worked for a farmer one summer who used to say "everyone has their vices." I think so. Maybe you don't smoke, drink or cuss but you like to pick your nose? and eat it. Or maybe you go to church regularly, sing the hymns and are quite saintlike..but you fight like crazy with the wife and kids on the way there. Maybe you like to spread gossip? Maybe you're a successful business man who beats his wife...a priest who abuses kids. Everyone has their vices. For my money I'll take someone with some obvious vices, that they recognize, over the holier than thou folks anyday.
Another time a boss of mine and I were at lunch. He said something like, "I smoked a cigarette once and never wanted to again...or maybe it was, "I never smoked a cigarette and never wanted to." I thought to myself, "you poor bastard, either you are so out of touch with the oddly beautiful addictive nature of nicotine or you're living a life that's as exciting as that bowl of lukewarm mushy oatmeal".
To each their own.
The "you are what you are and just the opposite" title is not a new thought, but it's an interesting one.
Whoever wrote this section of the Wikipedia article on Carl Jung said it better than I can:
The Shadow
"The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the diametrical opposite of the conscious self, the ego. The shadow represents everything that the conscious person does not wish to acknowledge within themselves. For instance, someone who identifies as being kind has a shadow that is harsh or unkind. Conversely, an individual who is brutal has a kind shadow. The shadow of persons who are convinced that they are ugly appears to be beautiful.
The shadow is not necessarily good or bad. It simply counterbalances some of the one-sided dimensions of our personality. Jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness. Otherwise we project these attributes onto others.
Contemporary examples include religious zealots who project their own hatred onto other religions or groups, accusing them of the very thing that they are unable to accept within themselves. Another potent example of shadow projection is seeing in another person, with whom one is infatuated, good and wonderful qualities that one refuses to see in oneself.
The shadow in dreams is often represented by dark figures of the same gender as the dreamer, such as gangsters or prostitutes or beggars or liars."
