Long ago I knew a much older, well-regarded woman holding a high corporate position. She and her husband had worked for the American government in London during World War Two. There she left him for what she later regarded as a trivial matter, a decision that she later greatly regretted, once considering suicide.
As a teenager I loved a novel, The Song Of The Red Ruby, by the Norwegian writer, Agnar Mykle. After publication in 1956 it became a best-seller, selling seventy-five-thousand copies in its first year and a million copies in its English edition. Which should have guaranteed the author's success until the book was condemned as obscene. He was acquitted after a year-long legal battle which included reading the entire novel in court. Later information suggested the charge was politically motivated. Though Mykle had been the Labor Party's most talented author, his book poked fun at socialism and he became considered a traitor.
The rest of Mykle's life was a shambles. "I have survived my crucifixion," he said, but he hadn't. His reputation was destroyed, he divorced his wife during the trial and retreated into depression. He later declared bankruptcy, was frequently treated in a psychiatric hospital, and shut himself off, living like a hermit and rarely opening his door, dying in 1994.
Two talented people of different social and business worlds whose lives became devastated by choice and event. Evidencing what can't be repeated too often: that while the unconscious is powerful, understanding and forgiving one's mistakes is critical since it opens the door to freedom.