(blows the dust off)

(shakes the cobwebs out)

Hi, howaya, long time no write. 

__________

I had one of those wide-ranging deep convos last night that sustain me. This was a highlight:

"People who constantly reinvent themselves aren't happy with who they fundamentally are"

That statement cavorted around my cranium seeking connection and eventually dredged up this:

Leonard Cohen said his teacher once told him that, the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. This is because, as we go through life, we tend to over-identify with being the hero of our stories. 

This hero isn’t exactly having fun: he’s getting kicked around, humiliated, and disgraced. But if we can let go of identifying with him, we can find our rightful place in the universe, and a love more satisfying than any we’ve ever known.

People constantly throw around the term “hero’s journey” without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness influencers thinks the hero’s journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. But that’s not the real hero’s journey.

In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.

If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning. But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. This is where your transcendent life begins.

So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall. Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you.

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Grade 13 Classical Civilizations was easily the most deeply rewarding class I took in my scholastic career. I have talked at length about the teacher, Rev. "Uncle Rog" Roger McCombe, who officiated seemingly every wedding in Ingersoll and environs for a good many years. He would have been my first choice had he been alive in 2000.

So much of his tutelage stuck with me. I found his omnism refreshing: here was an ordained Anglican minister who saw the holy in everyone and everything everywhere all the time. He was fascinated with the Greek and Roman pantheons, and we spent a solid week trying to digest Joseph Campbell's The Power Of Myth. I think I got a lot more out of it than most of my classmates.

It was then I first learned of the hero's Journey. I'd heard the term before, of course, but only in the context our society places it, neatly described above. 

I already was beginning to grasp -- and struggling with -- the realization that I am nobody's hero.

The first inkling was in something I took five years running in school thanks to curriculum changes and frequent moves (three different high schools): T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I can not express how deeply this poem hit me. I am J. Alfred Prufrock in every way that matters. 

Prufrock struggles with himself in a way that was deeply familiar to me then and still is. He's terrified of rejection and can't understand his lack of courage. "And should I then presume? And how should I begin?" Questions I ask myself daily even now and that is not a comfortable thing to admit.

Hero's journeys involve tragedy. A real hero's journey leaves scars. I've seen tragedy and I have enough scar tissue, thank you. 

It's a hard lesson to learn. "You don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know."

I have the first part down cold. I don't need to win. I was a  very sore loser as a kid (and not a gracious winner, either), but that was before I matured enough to understand that Darwinian competition might serve our genes well, but it's no way to build a society.

The society I live in thinks it's the ONLY way to build a society.

You can call me a loser if you want. The reality is I'm not playing. Trying not to play. I'd be much better at not playing if I could bring myself not to need recognition or knowledge. Without the former I feel cut off; without the latter I feel ignorant, which is another way of saying cut off. 

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I think about Eva here. She was raised to be self-reliant and to drive drive drive. She's rebelled against her raising in some ways, for good and ill, but she can't escape it entirely. For most of her life, she has pursued hobby after hobby, but not in a healthy way. She almost views these things like enemies to be conquered in mortal combat. Once she proves herself, the hobby in question gets discarded. In that way, my wife continually reinvents herself -- and not only in that way. She's had a number of careers, and she always starts at the bottom, ascends rapidly almost without intending to, until she reaches the level where the politics are in play.

Eva has little patience for politics and doesn't feel the need to hide it. It's bitten her more than once.

I think I have done well to soften her roughest edges and keep her centered. I think she's done the same for me. We're not special, either of us, or certainly no more special than you are. But that transcendent life Cohen's teacher states is the reward for the unheroic? Yeah, we feel that. We fight against the injustices of our every days -- and some days we lose -- but we're fighting our battles. Not someone else's. That's important to us.

____________

I think of others here, people who feel like failures because their siblings have the accolades and achievements, but recognizing that they are their own people, worthy of admiration and acclaim. People who hold tight to their moral cores, but who grow and bloom by reflection and conscious living. For me,  these people who do not feel like heroes are the real heroes, and watching them bloom brings me more joy than I know what to do with.

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"..and Life in its vastness with embrace you."

(hug)