A Beautiful Anarchy. David DuChemin

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СКАЧАТЬ those on future generations. We will, because this is life, continue to collect these experiences. But they are raw materials only, and what we do with them is a part of the choices we make in the creation of ourselves. It’s a collaborative effort with Life, an unpredictable partner to be sure, but it’s our reactions that form the people we become.

      To those reactions we add our choices about the stories we listen to, the books we read, the people with whom we surround ourselves, and the jobs in which we choose to remain too long. We choose the ones to whom we give our hearts, our time, our money. We choose to continue learning or not. We choose to buy that new stereo instead of the ticket to Australia for the year in the outback we always wanted. And in so doing, we create the person we become, piece by piece. It’s a good argument for making those decisions with greater care and intention.

      If I’ve got a tendency to oversimplify, forgive me; I know life is profoundly complicated at times. But I also know that “it’s complicated” is a poor excuse for resigning ourselves to our fate, as though it’s our lot in life. It would be easy to allow overwhelming debt, bankruptcy, divorce, a diabetes diagnosis, or a near-fatal fall that shatters both your feet, to sideline you. Or me. I’ve lived through all of those, and there have been times I’d have thrown all this right back in the face of anyone who told me excitedly that I was “living a really great story.” But they’d be right all the same, and at the end of it, what have we got but to make the best of it, and write the best damn story we can? Self-pity makes an interesting scene in the movie, especially when it leads to broken furniture, a bar fight, or preferably both—but it gets old fast, and after a few minutes it’s neither a story we want to keep watching, nor one we want to be a part of. The best stories are never the easy ones.

      I keep using the word react but it’s only half the story; living in reaction, even mindful reaction, is not living intentionally. Take your favourite story: the hero usually resists the initial call to adventure, or love. Then something comes along to force him into the fray—he reacts and embarks. But at a certain point the story becomes his own, and it is his desire that drives him forward, not just circumstances. He eventually risks it all because the calling now comes not from outside voices or forces, but from deep inside. Now might be a good time to start unabashedly asking yourself, “What do I want?”

      Some of the best stories don’t really begin until the hero grapples with that question. And for some of us the grappling will come hard because we’ve been taught not to ask the question. It seems selfish. But I think the things we do in life that are motivated by desire and love are the most powerful, and I don’t believe that our happiness has to come at the expense of others. I believe we’re connected and my happiness has to include that of others. I’ll talk more about this, but I want to plant the question. The first question is not, “What should I be doing with my life?” It’s, “What do I want to do with my life?” And if that sounds selfish to some, I can only say that it’s in identifying the deepest desires of my heart or mind that I find my calling. It’s my hardwiring, and I believe it was put there by Something or Someone good.

      Knowing, deep down, what you want to do with your life leads to a ruthless prioritization of resources. Knowing your time, among other resources, is limited, and knowing what you want to do with that time, allows you a profound freedom, even if that freedom is not always easy.

      If you want to create more interesting, meaningful, beautiful songs, paintings, businesses, or meals, become a more interesting, meaningful, and beautiful person. Gather the best raw materials you can (or the only ones you’ve got), work within the constraints you’re handed, and make something new. The art comes from the will of the artist, but first there has to be an artist, and—out of nothing, nothing comes. Reaction only takes us so far: it’s more a posture of daily life, one we assume while we go about intentionally pursuing, or creating, the things we most long for.

      What do you want to do with your life? I don’t mean this abstractly or obliquely. Find some silence and sit down with a cup of coffee. Mindfully consider your life now, the things you’ve done with your life that have made you the most content or fulfilled. What do you want to be remembered for, one day long in the future when your moments run out? Write it down. What does your heart long for? What dreams can you not let go of? What obstacles stand in the way now? What steps could you take to clear them? If those desires are worth pursuing, they’re worth recognizing and clearing a path for.

      THE ARTIST’S JOURNEY

      One of the great revelations of my life came when I discovered Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I read it while studying films and screenplays and trying to understand what makes a great story. And I read it while in the middle of a divorce and unsure I would survive the trauma of that.

      While challenging to read, I found one idea that stuck with me and resonated so completely that it’s still a rare month that I haven’t gone back to it, to sift through the paradigm and find meaning. That idea is the Hero’s Journey—the idea that in the mythology of every culture through time there are common elements in the stories that give our lives meaning. Books like The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler and Story by Robert McKee explore this idea in order to help writers create stories that are more powerfully resonant. I think we can use the idea to see the creative process from a new perspective, and to write our own story in more intentional ways, and with greater understanding.

      The Hero’s Journey is not a formula, and it’s not prescriptive. It’s descriptive. It looks into the stories we’ve told each other since the dawn of time and asks why they have such a ring of truth, and what elements they have in common. The hero takes many forms, and is not gender specific. She can be a warrior, to be sure, but as often can be an explorer, an inventor, a mother, a tradesman, or an artist. What he or she is is not important; the Hero’s Journey is more concerned about the path the hero takes.

      Borrowing from the language of Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey (because he makes the often difficult language of Campbell much more accessible), the Hero’s Journey begins in the Ordinary World. It is the place in which we live our ordinary lives, waking daily to our ordinary tasks, and from which the hero is about to be shaken by the Call to Adventure (which I’m capitalizing to make it a little easier to see the structure). That call comes in a million ways, but is almost always an awakening, a desire, a longing, or a crazy idea. For me it’s often expressed as a “What if . . . ?” However it comes, it’s a call away from the mundane: a call to rock a boat, to change a status that’s been quo for too long, a call to make—to create—a change.

      If you’re like me or like most others (including the protagonists in millennia of stories), you’re likely to refuse the call at first. The Refusal of the Call is common, and though there are times it’s taken up quickly and without thought, it’s the human tendency to prefer the familiar and the safe over the unknown. And so we turn our attention elsewhere; we make excuses; we procrastinate. Even when the call itself seems so right and fills a longing, it’s our nature to count to three a few times to build the bravado needed to jump into water we know will be cold and dark. Once we own that call, once we accept and dive in, pack our bags, sit down at the typewriter, or get out a new canvas, the journey truly begins. Acceptance of the call is, in most movies, where the action begins and the protagonist crosses the First Threshold into the special world of the adventure, the new world in which the story unfolds and after which nothing will be the same. Dorothy steps onto the Yellow Brick Road, Luke joins the Rebel forces, and Peter Parker puts on the Spider-Man costume for the first time. Here the hero meets allies and enemies, encounters tests and trials, and begins his approach to the Inmost Cave.

      The Inmost Cave is where the hero endures the ordeal that is central to the story, the conflict around which the story revolves. Without conflict there is no story. There is no catalyst to change, and no reason for us to keep reading. Who wants to read a story in which СКАЧАТЬ