Sometimes, answers do not come as explanations, but as images. A card, a story, or a well-placed question can illuminate a part of us that was waiting to be seen. We are used to believing that understanding comes through explanations. That change begins when we find the cause, formulate the right conclusion, or receive the right advice. And yet there are moments when none of these manage to touch what we feel. Then a symbol appears. You do not search for it. You do not interpret it. You simply encounter it. It may be a bridge you have to cross. A rusty key. A tree that continues to bloom after winter. A lantern lit in an empty square. At first, it is only an image. Then it begins to speak. Not because symbols carry a universal meaning hidden in a dictionary of signs, but because every person brings their own story into the encounter with them. The same bridge may mean reconciliation for one person and separation for another. The same tree may speak of roots or of the freedom to grow elsewhere.
Symbols do not offer prefabricated answers. They create the space in which answers can appear. This is why, in a therapeutic process, a metaphor can sometimes open a conversation that dozens of direct questions have not managed to begin. When we speak about a symbol, the mind no longer feels it has to defend itself. It is no longer forced to prove, justify, or explain. It can simply explore. A symbol does not tell you who you are; it invites you to discover. That is why stories, myths, and symbolic images accompanied people long before psychology became a discipline. They were the way communities transmitted meaning, spoke about loss, love, fear, or hope, and offered a language for things difficult to express in ordinary words. For some, a valley may become the place where they meet the echoes of childhood. For others, the same valley will speak about the courage to find their own voice. A lantern may mean hope or responsibility. Or the promise they once made and forgot. There is no correct interpretation, only the encounter between the symbol and the person who looks at it.
Carl Gustav Jung wrote that a symbol is alive precisely because it cannot be exhausted by a single explanation. The moment we believe we have found its final meaning, it stops being a symbol and becomes only a sign. An authentic symbol continues to generate questions. It continues to open perspectives. It continues to grow together with the person who encounters it. Perhaps this is also why some stories stay with us for years. Not because we understood them, but because, in the meantime, we changed, and they began to tell us something else. Perhaps inner exploration does not always begin with the right question - sometimes it begins with an image. With a character, a road, a forgotten object. With a symbol that, without raising its voice, says exactly what you needed to hear. And when a symbol begins to speak, it has not changed. You have become ready to listen.
- RN