The Second Arrow

The Buddhists have this idea of psychic arrows—that my friend Katie told me about and that otherwise I have not done any research on, but the way that she told me was profound and so I shall try to (wildly) paraphrase it here—a remarkable image of a series of arrows that life delivers us. It goes something like this: We receive from life a deadly arrow that we neither deserve or asked for but that nevertheless happened to us anyways, such as, for example, being born in flesh and blood to clumsy parents who may or may not have the time or inclination to aid in our upbringing (and may have even worked to stifle or abuse us). Our initial helplessness (hilflosigkeit)—that no one can ever avoid—is so unilateral and insidious as to cause, later in life, a neurosis; that is a thought—or a habit of thoughts—that, by its very nature, causes suffering. This neurosis is the second arrow (sprung from our own unconscious via nachträglichkeit), and probably, if we are being honest, a third, forth and fifth arrow and so on (and obviously, due to the vicissitudes of life, there are no shortage of first arrows). The Buddhist idea is that, though we can do nothing about the first arrow, that has already torn our body, we are in fact responsible for the second arrow. While a shitty childhood is not our fault, the resulting neurosis is our responsibility. The second arrow—that is an excess of psychic energy that can never be rationalized or voided—is neither good nor bad (but thinking makes it so). The psychoanalytic wager is that this second arrow is generative and has a force and a trajectory that may aid in transformation…