The Hero’s Journey, Part 2

The Hero’s Journey, Part 2

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.[1]

The typical cycle for the Hero’s Journey, as I described last week, is an invitation, initiation, transformation, and return or resurrection. Such a journey may be completed in days or weeks, although some hero’s journeys last for years, even decades. The use of the word hero can be misleading, because although many well-known examples of a Hero’s Journey were traversed by people who accomplished amazing works for others at tremendous personal cost (think Jesus of Nazareth), most hero’s journeys are accomplished by people like you and me going through life as it presents itself to us.

Here is an example of a 40-year Hero’s Journey of mine (and I am far from anyone’s hero) that is particularly present to me with the recent passing of my wife. The invitation to this journey occurred formally on February 20, 1987, when Carrie and I became engaged to be married. In Joseph Campbell’s words, this was our call to adventure. The invitation, however, was not a single, momentary event of me getting down on a knee and asking Carrie to marry me. Rather, there was a nearly two-year build-up to the actual proposal as we began dating and became better acquainted with each other, culminating in the decision to get married. The actual wedding occurred on October 17, 1987, but I would include the planning, wedding, honeymoon, and even the early weeks of living together as a married couple to be part of the invitation stage of the journey. It was all (mostly) one, long grand adventure.

We gradually transitioned into the second phase of the Journey, the initiation, after a few weeks of marriage when tensions would sometimes build over issues like the handling of finances, sharing of household duties, how to spend our free time, furnishing and decorating our home, and all the other daily complexities of living with another human being. Although I believe we handled most of these tensions in respectful, mature ways, there were certainly times when we both wondered what we had gotten ourselves into, knowing there was no returning to life as it was prior to the invitation. At times it was a hard and unpleasant adjustment, but we were committed to seeing our way through the challenges together and returning to the happy, married couple we knew we were capable of being. The initiation phase gradually ended as we each gained acceptance that there were certain sacrifices of our individual natures and preferences required if we were to live together as a united couple instead of as two, independent individuals.

The third stage, the transformation, made up the bulk of our married life as we constantly adjusted our personal desires to the changing environment. We grew, individually, as a part of a new entity, which was us as a couple and eventually for us as a family. We progressed in our professions, earned master’s degrees, had children, changed homes, buried parents and family members, communed with friends, endured illnesses, and the ten-thousand other challenges we go through in the normal course of life. Those events, routine as they often seem, transform us as individuals, but they also changed us as a couple. Thus, the transformation for me was an individual change, but also a change in my roles as a husband, father, friend, and co-worker. And as I changed, everything and everyone in relationship to and with me was also forced to change, although not always in such significant ways.

The final stage of the journey is the return. For me (since I’m telling the story of my hero’s journey) the return was not going back to the physical land of my childhood but back to life as a single man. I lived alone as a bachelor for 15 years as a young man. I have now returned to life as a bachelor as a not-so-young man. And although I have returned to that same situation of singleness, I am knowing this place as if “for the first time.” After my 40 year journey with Carrie, I am a transformed person and so everything appears new to me. I return to bachelorhood, now as a widower, but also with amazing adult children, dear friends that knew and loved Carrie and I as a couple, and a home that stands as a tangible testament to the last 40 years.

This particular Hero’s Journey is unique to my life, but the pattern should be familiar to many because it is repeated by everyone throughout the course of their lives. On shorter, less dramatic hero’s journeys the transformations tend to be more subtle, but everything that happens in life changes us in some way. Which is exactly the purpose of the Hero’s Journey. Next week I will discuss Jesus’ Journey.

This is the 45^th in a series titled Crucifying Christianity, Resurrecting the Way.Life Notes are my explorations into mysteries that interest me. They are invitations for readers to explore more deeply into life’s mysteries. Engage with me or explore contemplative spiritual direction at ghildenbrand@outlook.com.

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[1] T.S. Eliot, from Four Quartets