Life, death, and everything in between

The Hero's journey, in my opinion, is somewhat difficult to define thoroughly. I truly believe that every single one of us goes through at one point or another in our lives. It is taken by oneself. We all need to deal with death. Whether it be the death of a loved one, a favorite pet, a good friend, we also have to deal with death ourselves. I feel as though so many people are reluctant and choose to avoid discussing death. It makes them uncomfortable, or sad. This may come off as extremely morbid, and pardon me if it does, but I see absolutely nothing wrong or scary or harmful about the concept of death. In the words of my girl Sylvia Plath, “Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” 


Most importantly we need to understand ourselves. It is nearly impossible to understand others if we do not understand ourselves first. This is hard. Figuring out who you are as a person at the ripe old age of eighteen seems a bit far fetched, and I certainly haven't pin pointed it yet. But having a cursory understanding of yourself is key. My hero's journey, as I'm sure many people are already posting about, is indeed, when I go off to college next Fall. I'm the youngest and I've barely made it out of New England. I'm going off to Upstate New York next year to study Public Relations and Advertising. I am going to be that guy (or girl, rather)  that persuades you into buying useless shit. Holla. But anyway, by going into foreign territory, I'm hoping to truly find out who I really am. Living on my own, and being completely responsible for myself is going to be a new thing for me. It will be challenging, yes, but I'm ready. 


That is my attempted definition of the Hero's journey. The End. 

In The Shoes Of a Hero

Life is one big adventure, and it is up to the hero to decide how best to take it.  An adventurer should not fear the adventure he partakes in however, as most each adventure has been experienced by his ancestors and the people around him's ancestors.  The world hold's professions that are known to man, and there are living heros who can help others achieve success in those professions.  Where people can expect hardship or fear from an unknown, pleasure can be found.  There are times in life when men are torn down when they thought they thoight they had the upper hand, and there are times when men rise up to show meaning in their existence.  And where men need others to build their existence to a glorious state, others will be there.

    As an 18 year old about to graduate from highschool, there is a grand adventure waiting for me outside the walls of Keene.  I am a hero, along with billions of others in the world who is fulfilling the adventure of life or will be soon after birth.  As explained in the above, my completing highschool is not solo.  There are many kids fulfilling similar adventures who need to complete highschool to further progress their lives.  It is after highschool that my adventure branches out in different directions than my peers, and I must take part in the first adventure of its kind.  Although each person has his one adventure that is completely new, similar experiences can be shared to make the adventure easier or more understandable.

    Many people expect to find abominations or have aversions to ideas and experiences, but most can find a diamond in the rough or a light in the dark if they put themselves up for it.  New experiences can warrant positive results as easily as negative.  College is a completely new, scary experience for myself that could provide negative results for my life, but from what I gather from the many who shared similar experiences, college can be all that I want if I make it.  I could come out on top, or bomb and show up on rock bottom, but no matter what happens, the people around me will not make me go alone.

Stories

"We tell stories to try to come to terms with the world, to harmonize our lives with reality... Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are."  

-Bill Moyers

To me, this quotation is much deeper and goes further into the human psyche than even I would have imagined. Since I was a little kid, the thrill of hearing a story, in any form, was the most exhilarating thing that happened to me on a regular basis. My childhood in particular provided me with many chances to hear stories, and I seized every opportunity I could get. Being a student of the Monadnock Waldorf School, story-telling was nothing less than a daily occurrence. Each and every day, during main lesson, the teacher told a story of some kind. Some were about animals, some people, and some were directly taken from things like the Bible and other religious documents. These stories captivated me in a way that never would have been possible with a TV show or movie.

Each and every time I heard a new story, I tried to walk in the hero of the tale’s shoes. I was Moses talking to the burning bush. I was Robin Hood, saving the poor and being jocund with my merry men. I was every animal from a bear to a fish, and I enjoyed every second of it. However, as I continued to slip seamlessly into more and more hero’s shoes, I began to notice a pattern. I layman’s terms, more specifically Bill Moyer’s terms, all of the stories loosely follow the pattern described in this quotation. Each time a hero is faced with a challenge that shifts everything that he or she knows about the world, the the challenge is overcome throughout the rest of the story, and in the end, wisdom is gained.

Eventually, I began to explain this with the Freshman English plot diagram. I thought: “Oh that’s just what a story is.” That view stuck with me through most of High School because, truthfully, I never really thought it needed  more explaining. But after discussions of the hero’s journey and much of the literature that I have read in this class, the plot diagram is now just one of many aspects that shroud a story with its unknown aura of interest. Now when I look at a story, I don’t just see myself walking in the character’s situation, I become the character with a small part of myself. I use my experiences and knowledge to try and understand the feelings and thoughts of a character so full of these precious emotions someone felt it was important that his or her story be written down to be told again.

Trial by Fire

Responding to Quotation B

 

            Although they are not as fantastical as those spoken of in legend, each and every one of us experiences the hero’s journey. One of the times in my life that I experienced a version of the hero’s journey was the first time that I auditioned for the New Hampshire All-State Music Festival.

            I was enticed by the prestige and honor of All-State, which, along with the encouraging words of mentors, led me to embark upon the “Adventure” of the audition into the realm of the unknown. However, I was unprepared for the challenges that I would face. I wasn’t ready for the extreme frustration that is associated with perfecting music sung in a foreign language. Many times I was tempted to give up completely to make the frustration stop, but I persevered. I

Unfortunately, all my preparation wasn’t enough to prepare me for my audition. Once at the location of the auditions, I became increasingly nervous and pessimistic. I stressed myself out to the point that when I reached the audition room, I was a complete mess. I botched the song in numerous locations, and the whole time felt terrible.           

When I returned home, I noticed a change within me. I realized that compared to the ordeal through which I had just passed, singing in everyday situations was no longer intimidating.  The experience gave me greater confidence, and was invaluable in forging me into the more confident person that I am today.

I'm Flying Solo

Response to quote A:

A hero's journey is one that must be taken by oneself. One must dive into unknown water, and find the "treasure." This treasure can be anything from finding personal gain, wealth, etc... It's not just the goal, but how we get there. Not only that, but a hero always learns their true selves which makes them in the end, a true hero. 

Next year will be a hero's journey for me. I will be venturing alone to the unknown college life. It will be the first time ever that no one will be telling me how to live my life, and what choices I should make to be successful. What I shall see, and who I will meet will be an all new experience. Sure there are countless stories of people's first college experience, but each one in different. What I choose to do at college will determine if my journey is successful or not.

Through this journey of college I will find out who I am. I will learn my real interest and how to pursue them in a career. I will learn how to deal with the "abysses" in life, and in general be more knowledgeable of my surroundings. Though I will have conquered the journey that was given to me, I will have much more awaiting me whether it's good or bad, and I will be ready to to take it on, even if I have to do it alone. 

The World Around Us

As long as there have been people, there have been stories. As human beings, we have a need for stories. They exist in many forms, are presented in many mediums, and hold tales of infinite imaginings. Throughout time there have been endless reasons for stories to come into the world, but as American Journalist Bill Moyers said:

We tell stories to try to come to terms with the world, to harmonize our lives with reality... Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passage from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are.

Human beings always seek to understand the world around them. We search for meaning in our world, hoping to find something, anything, that may make our surroundings make sense. As Moyers stated, we often do this through stories. For it is through stories that we explore our world, across time, across nations. Through stories we can discovering meaning and reach understanding. In stories we can create imaginary circumstances that help us coping with our own lives, and through stories we can find the significance of our actions and those of others around us.

We tell stories, read stories, find stories. In modern society we receive stories in new forms.  There are tomes full of stories, plays, puppet shows. But there are also movies, television shows, radio shows. And through all of these we experience stories. Stories different from our own lives. They have unique scenarios, or well-known scenes. But they are separate from our lives, and we can use them as a lens through which we can better understand our experiences here, in our own lives.

As I child I created my own stories. Some were merely imagined, acted out in my play. Others I wrote down, or told to the people surrounding me. Some of my stories were wild fantasy, based off nothing more than a passing thought, or an idea I saw presented somewhere. Others were closer to reality, with only some small aspect of my world changed. Maybe in this one I had a brother, but perhaps in that one I lived in the wild, running free with only the animals as my friends.

Regardless of the details, my stories were my interpretations of my life, my universe. Sometimes I they were just my own life retold to my journal. Whatever the stories, I used them, as Moyers said, to come to terms. With my family. With my friends. With the death of a loved one. With the mysterious wonder that was my life.

Now my stories have changes, as my life has changed. The books I read are different, as are the movies I watch. And the stories I tell. But I still continue to record my dreams, interpret my world. I still cope with reality, whether I see it accurately or combine it with my fantasies. I continue to come to terms, discovering who I am. 

Shiva's Dancing on Me

In The Power of Myth, an interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell, a respected American mythologist, stated that:  

“We have not even to risk the[hero’s] adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have one before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

I find his wisdom very comforting. Everything that will be done has been done before. But it’s much more than that. It’s the guidance of heroes from centuries past, the accumulation of the hero’s story that lead us through our own trials. The journey of a hero, through the descent into the metaphorical or literal abyss to emerging transformed, has been taken by many people in the past and will assuredly be taken in the future. We follow the path of all previous heroes and all future heroes. The path is well known through myth and legend and in following the well worn trail we leave the realm of the comfortable known world into the unknown, into a realm of discovery. Where we thought a monster dwelled in the dark of ignorance the divine is discovered through the enlightenment that comes from physical or self exploration. Where we thought destroy a monster (the unknown) we really had to destroy our old self to allow the new, changed you to immerge. Like Shiva having to destroy the old to create the new, the good kind of destruction. Dance on your ignorance and revel in your transformed better-educated state. Where we though the journey was purely to defeat a monster in a foreign land it was really the internal journey of self discover. And where we thought to be alone, traveling party of one, the journey was really with every hero there ever was and every hero there will be. Learning is a state of enlightenment; the hero’s journey is the process of connecting to the collective conscious of the universe.

We all have been or are on a hero’s journey, traveling through transformation from child to adult, from old to new. So for me it’s nice to know the terror that comes from the unknown has been faced down many times and many people have emerged the better for it. Though sacrifices are part of a hero’s journey, the sacrifice of your old self for the new doesn’t seem so bad when the new will be superior. The seed is spilt open to make a fragrant bloom; the caterpillar must give up his happy leaf-munching life to be able to fly. It’s comporting for me to know I’m not entering the abyss alone and through I may miss the sweet crunchy leaves of this existence, the view of a tree from the bright blue sky is more than worth the sacrifice.