One in Seven Billion, Totally Unique

What is your purpose in life and how do you know if you've found it?  Getting back to the clues the universe leaves around, the fingerprints of your talent and gifts, I believe you know early on what fascinates you, pulls you into its realm of possibility.  Math?  Dance?  Texture?  Words?  Patterns?  Ideas?  No one knows the things you know in exactly the way you know them or will ever live the sequence of events you have lived through.  Horrors and joys, love and anger in the places you have known them make you able to do what only you can do, create only as you can.

There are things that you discount because they are simple to you.  You have not pushed the boundaries of what you can do with your talent if the thing is easy to you or boring.  If the thing that you love to do is difficult but fascinating, do it; something about that fascination is a clue to you about your essential qualities, the you that is nobody else.  Maybe there is something you feel is crucially important to work on and cannot let go of.  That's what's working you; your gifts are being brought to bear.

The most frustrating tragedies in life are often due to a denial of true self.  The great loss of talent and potential through oppression and too-early death is an immeasurable tragedy.  But poor self-esteem, lack of awareness of possibility and a sense of false obligation to standards imposed by others are potentially as ruinous to us as death is.  Often in society we feel obliged to do what others tell us to do, believing they understand our destinies and our hearts better than we understand our own.  But that's impossible.  Nobody knows you like you, and no one sees the situation just like you do.  Witnesses to crimes and catastrophes all have tell a different version of what happened - they all literally saw something different than the other witnesses did.

In a way, the uniqueness of our personal existence leads to loneliness and a sense of separateness.  We may say, "No one sees it like I do; no one understands me," and it's the truth.  In my opinion, I want to see it like no one else does.  I don't want to be the same as anyone else.  I was born me, and that is who I must be.  However, if I forge ahead without considering the giving of my gifts to the world, my talents will become burdens, to me and to my community.

I don't believe that talent or purpose is so easy to recognize that we can just sit under a shade tree until the apple of opportunity falls into our laps.  Joseph Campbell said he wished the term he coined "follow your bliss" had been expressed as "follow your blisters."  It's a trudge, a lifelong journey undertaken to express our talent and find purpose in life.  Who doesn't ask, "Why am I here?"  I have, many times. Seems to me my purpose is to find my purpose, and I'm still trying to figure it out.

A Hero's Journey - First Meeting

I led a small group of intellectually curious individuals today, all of whom felt an urge to effect change in their lives and gain insight about the change they go through.  The session's framework was based on The Hero's Journey with attention paid mainly to identifying a significant crossroads in the life of each person attending and then identifying stages of their own journey.  We talked about vision, dissatisfaction, resistance and obstacles as well as surprises we've encountered in work and life in general. How we deal with all these things transforms us.  Sometimes  we are unaware of the changes that have occurred unless we also take time to share our experience with people who are important to us.

This was my first attempt at group leadership - initiated and led by me - so I had a lot to experience myself as I was teaching others.  It seemed to go well and the group decided to meet again in a month.  I'll take that as a sign of success.  Now to prepare for that and successive meetings and potentially a seminar in the future.

The Hero's Journey is a wonderful model for understanding personal transformation, and to present it to people for the first time was a big first step.  Preparation is key, but readiness to be surprised by the reactions to questions that are asked is also essential.  And many questions are asked; it's part of the process of taking the journey.  

Taking on a personal challenge of daily writing this year has been my own journey on a personal level, but improving communication amongst peers on a professional level has also been a challenge I've decided to take on.  The more I understand the Hero's Journey model, the better I can evaluate what's happening as I run up against challenges as well as distractions.  Also, the more I study it, the better I can relate to other people who are expressing dismay, confusion or doubt in the face of their troubles.

Gaining insight into your self, attempting to answer the big questions in life - why am I here? where am I going? - and developing a sense of purpose in life can be daunting.  By studying the structure of myths and why they have always been part of  human culture, it's possible to gain insight more fully and cope with difficulties better.  I'm looking forward to much more study with this group in the months ahead.

Facilitating a Journey

Based on my work in July related to The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell, I am giving a seminar for some colleagues of mine tomorrow.  It's the first time I have been a facilitator in this way, so I'm excited about it and curious to see what the outcome will be.

The three main features of this famous pattern describing the myths and legends in all cultures are The Call, The Journey and the Return.  In actuality, Campbell described many more typical parts to the Hero's Journey, but in relation to team-building and community-building work, these are the significant three.

I remember being presented with Greek myths for the first time when I was in grade school and getting lost in the details, the genealogy of mythical creatures and heroes.  You know, so and so, son of Zeus, brother of someone else, uncle to another and half-brother to...etc.  It made my head swim, and I totally missed the point of what myths could teach me.  My loss, for sure.

Obviously, myths have been important to humankind for a few thousand years.  All cultures have mythical heroes and heroines whose actions serve as metaphor for our own struggles, journeys and ideas.  What I learned in July, though, was explained in such a way that it seemed as if I was getting the message for the very first time in my life.  That is, very often in our culture we are not asked for and do not process meaning in our travels, our work, and our lives.

We are asked, "What happened?  Where did you go?"  But the answer leads to a recapitulation of the string of events that we encountered, not what they meant to us.  Too often people go through an experience and are expected to move on, get over it, feel better, cheer up.  So, the exact opposite happens.  We lose the valuable opportunity to gain wisdom through reflection and interchange with a community that matters to us.  Depression, anxiety, dissatisfaction and anger result.

If we are asked instead, "What changed for you because of what you went through?"  or "What did you learn?" and have a chance to be heard and to speak, the journey is of value, and we experience transformation or self-actualization and fulfillment.  Life feels more worth living because we gain perspective and wisdom.  

We'll be talking about this tomorrow and we'll find out what each of us are in the middle of, literally and metaphorically speaking.  It will be interesting to see how it pans out.  I'll tell you what I learn when I return.  Meanwhile, see if you are at a turning point or significant moment in your life somehow.  It might be helpful to relate it to the Hero's Journey and reframe your experiences in a whole different way.