Mindfully changing the metaphors by which we live: The fox and the lotus flower

Abstract

Embarking on a road to Freudian self-discovery and with that an opportunity to engage in Rorty’s (1989) Nietzschean notion of ‘self-creation’, as in changing the metaphors by which we live, is difficult yet worthwhile. Contextualized within the lived experience of divorce, from both a wife and daughter’s perspective, this inquiry reveals what it is like to become mindful in moments of pain. More than a cathartic release, the authors make a conscious effort to transform their idiosyncratic natures, what they frame in terms of the Jungian shadow, with the intention of eating away the darkness and moving towards what Heidegger frames as the ‘simple brightness’ of our existence. New metaphors were thus birthed: the fox and the lotus flower