OK, so you've talked quite a bit about "refusing the call". For the sake of completeness, here are the chapter subsections and some brief descriptions:
The Call to Adventure
The hero receives a call to leave the familiar
Refusing the Call
Sometimes the call is not heeded, and the hero becomes a victim
The Supernatural Helper
Upon setting out, the hero receives help from a supernatural protector
The First Threshold
The hero must pass the threshold guardian.
The Belly of the Whale
The hero must descend into his own destruction.
But the part you found most compelling, it seems, was the section on the Refusal of the Call. I think that part is interesting too, and I think it's interesting that we are particularly attentive to the threat in this section. It echoes the warning in the prologue: "Be reborn, or slowly die!"
None of the other sections seem to elicit the same sort of soul-searching. The section on "the supernatural helper", for example, doesn't leave me asking, "Well WHERE is my supernatural helper!?" I don't know whether this is particular to us, because we're sort of young and feel an obligation to plot a meaningful or at least interesting Life Trajectory. But I kind of doubt it. And the reason I kind of doubt it is a Tony Campolo video I watched once upon a time called, I think, "Who switched the price tags".
In one part of the video, he tells this story about how, once upon a time, there were thousands of little sperms, all waiting for something to happen. And then it did! And there was a race! And YOU WON!
But that's not really the pertinent part of the video, so ignore that.
The pertinent part of the video was the part where Campolo told about how sociologists had interviewed a bunch of older people and asked them about their regrets, and what they would have done differently with their life if they had the chance. The answers, he said, fell into three main categories.
1. Risk more
2. Reflect more
3. Do more things that will live on after you are dead
And that's it. And I can't help but thinking that if these regrets are so broadly felt as to be practically universal, then warnings about them would be encoded in the great myths that Campbell is drawing on.
And sure enough, regret #1 -- risk more -- corresponds directly to the dynamic of call and refusal. "I was called to do X", says the person full of regret, "but I did Y instead." Or worse: "I did nothing."
The question that interests me, I think, is "how do we hear and answer our call?" Which, when you think of it, is an oddly circular question. Because what I'm considering is the risk of not risking anything -- regret -- and so doing nothing is actually risking something ... it's risking regret.
It's also a strange question because it seems kind of unlikely that any of us actually experience a call at the Epic and Supernatural level described in these stories. When's the last time a talking frog offered to help you fish your keys out of the fountain? But if Campbell is correct, and these stories are really about not some superhuman, supernatural hero, but about ourselves, then this problem goes away. We really do experience calls, urges, or even mere options to leave our comfort zones -- to risk something -- and go out into a world that is both threatening and promising.
So supposing for the moment that the question "how do I answer the call" is valid, what's the answer?
Aaand I don't really know. It seems like one way is to cultivate a habit of trying new things, risking things that are important to us, and so on. This improves the possibility that when an opportunity arises that's worthy of being described as a "call", we will listen.
Maybe that's also an important part of smart risk-taking: not only do you have to be willing and ready to answer the call, you also have to be a good listener, and wise enough to recognize a call when you hear one.
I'd like to wrap this up into something neat and tidy, explaining with better examples how we can go about listening for and responding to the call, but I'm afraid I don't have enough brain left for it at the moment. Maybe we can finish it in the comment section or something.
Another bit that I thought was really interesting was the story of the monarch who, at the end of a 12-year "term", was required to cut off lots of himself until he bled to death. I think this approach has lots of promise for power structures in general, even beyond government: the only power systems that can be tolerated are those that contain the seeds of its own destruction.
At the moment, though, I'm beat. Let's go on to the next section.
2 comments:
Great Campolo quote! That made me feel better about life.
I like your point about us having to be good listeners to really hear the call. Perhaps there's something deeper there about how we hone our vision of reality. Are we looking around desperately for out next paycheck, or are we seeking a way to better the world and enhance the experience for ourselves and all of humankind. Just appreciating a higher level of awareness.
Have you read Dune by Frank Herbert? It's a great book. This kind of makes me think of a test that the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother puts the young protagonist Paul through. He's directed to stick his hand into a small black box which the Reverend Mother holds, and not to remove it. Slowly, his hand is pricked and prodded until it is in great pain, as though it were on fire. Paul's instinct is to pull his hand out, but at this moment the Reverend Mother holds a needle to his neck which has a drop of poison on it. If he removes his hand, he dies. So, he must endure the pain until the Reverend Mother sees fit to release him. The whole point is that one must have control of his primal desires and focuses, he must be disciplined in order to raise himself to a higher awareness such that he can get past smaller obstacles and seek the central gesture of truth and the universe.
That's somewhat divergent from discussing refusing the call, but I think it touches on a similar notion of needing to raise one's awareness, whether it be to save your skin or progress holistically in life.
Also, reading over your post, I was reminded of Jesus' parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30. I've been wondering if "the call" may not be something to this order. The one-talent servant didn't seem to do anything particularly evil, he just kind of panicked and went into a protectionist stagnation instead of being creative and risking with it to possibly gain more. It's a fascinating story to me. Maybe the call is just that open ended. You've got some stuff and you need to do something with that stuff, or else you lose even the stuff you have.
Not that it has to be that directly capitalistic. This might be too great a shift in gear, but this also makes me think about our perception of history. People often speak of hindsight as being perfect, or being able to see the structure of historical trends and human action (i.e. the rise and fall of nations, or determinism vs. free will) with clarity after the fact. I suppose my thought is that looking backwards things always make sense, whereas looking forward, the future is like a formless block, which, when it reaches the present, the force of our existence slams against its surface, shaving and breaking away to create the form that people will speak of as history. Thus, the call may not be about the particular place which you strike, but the way in which you strike it.
Does that make sense?
I haven't read Dune, but I intend to.
>the force of our existence slams against its surface
And I like the image of our existence bumping into the future and creating history. It seems like it might have interesting implications.
More generally, though, I think the call is about whatever we need it to be about. Inertia is strong, and whether it's what we're doing or the way in which we're doing it, changing and risking are difficult. But nothing happens otherwise.
I think I've said this before, but I wonder if maybe the call is a sort of "memetic analogue" to random mutation in evolution. It seems like there has to be some mechanism encouraging people to change and risk. You mention capitalism, and I guess the promise of reward is a pretty good incentive ... maybe the call operates in a similar way, or maybe that is analogous to the call ... or something.
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