On a crisp morning in February of this year, I received an email from the principal of a Catholic school in my area which read: “Dear Jackson, are you currently employed?” From both the tone and the brevity, I instantly knew that this was a job offer to fill an unanticipated absence. It was two… Continue reading The great centering: my Saturn Return and the loss of grand narratives
Case studies
The Lives of Others as the ultimate Enneagram five template
One of my all-time favorite films, 2006’s The Lives of Others, concerns life under the Stasi in east Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the film, a Stasi operative named Gerd Wiesler is tasked with surveilling a pair of lover-artists, writer Georg Dreyman and actress Christa-Maria Sieland, because the state suspects them… Continue reading The Lives of Others as the ultimate Enneagram five template
Trapped at stage orange: spiral dynamics and the fate of Atlantis
Over this past week, I was tested four separate times for Covid. The first test, an at-home test, occurred because I was feeling ill and work at a school; the second test occurred because the first test's results would not return for nearly a week, and the school’s principal wanted me to resume teaching. Finally,… Continue reading Trapped at stage orange: spiral dynamics and the fate of Atlantis
Holding the symbols generously: marriage, child-rearing, and existential purpose
Does marriage hold meaning outside of convention? If all lives end, then isn’t marriage’s “permanency” a passing illusion? Don’t the joined souls ultimately separate in the great beyond or, if they remain merged, doesn’t that merging collapse any notion of their being separate to begin with? The same could be said of child-rearing; if the… Continue reading Holding the symbols generously: marriage, child-rearing, and existential purpose
“Are you not entertained?”: boredom, silence, age, and youth
Teaching high school these days, I am often reminded of Maximus from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, imploring the crowd, “Are you not entertained?” I scan my students’ bored, simultaneously hopeful faces, and I want to tell them: as you turn older, your lives will become both more boring, but paradoxically more pleasurable; that’s if you’re lucky!… Continue reading “Are you not entertained?”: boredom, silence, age, and youth
Jackson Holzberg Buckley 