The
Hero's Journey
“We
are on the hero's journey when we submit to the deep processes of
life and allow them to affect us and bore their necessities into us.
We are the hero when we take on the challenges and go through our
initiations and transformations, enduring loss and gain, feeling
happy and sad, making progress and falling back. The hero is engaged
in life.”
Thomas
Moore (A Religion of One's Own)
Great
literature almost always involves the tale of a hero's journey. From
the Odyssey, to Moby Dick, to Harry Potter, we love to read the saga
of the long and difficult transformation of the hero who sails out
into the unknown, and returns home a changed person. The hero is
almost always reluctant to take on the journey, feeling inadequate,
feeling that others have more strength and endurance. Take Katniss in
The Hunger Games, for instance. She stepped into the fray in place of
her younger sister. Initially, she expected to die in the arena; she
had no belief in herself as a possible winner, so her strategy became
to simply hide from stronger players and try to survive. But then she
met others, Peeta for one, and Rue, who were weaker than she, and she
wanted to help them survive, too. The hero's journey always involves
dedication to life, to one's own and to that of others.
When
we walk through our lives in a conscious way, allowing others to
affect us, getting scarred by our loves and losses, and becoming more
aware each day of who we are, and what our task is, we take on the
hero's journey. We don't think of ourselves as heroes, but living
life without blinders, experiencing all the ups and downs, coming to
grips with the reality of joy and pain, is a hero's journey. One of
my sons said to me recently, “It just doesn't get any easier, does
it?” He had just lost his beloved dog. My response was, “That makes it all the more important to love the sweet spots when you have
them.” The one who embraces life with all its beauty and ugliness
is truly heroic.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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