Tag: hero

The play’s the thing…

All the world’s a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players:/ They have their exits and their entrances;/ And one man in his time plays many parts. – Shakespeare

There’s a belief common in spiritual practice that all the people who play important roles in our lives, from our parents, to our friends, to those who hurt us the most, signed up for their roles to teach us something that we came here to learn. And that those who love us the most are the ones who hurt us the most, because in being hurt we have the biggest opportunities to learn and grow.

And, when we exit, we will meet all of them again as their authentic selves, not in the role they played on the stage of our lives.

As a dear friend reminded me recently, we are all acting out plays that were written a long time ago. He was referring to our behavior patterns and thought patterns, which can become ingrained at an early age.

Except we forget that it’s a play. We get invested. We think it’s real. This is like believing the funhouse mirror shows us the real picture.

If our lives are pure fiction, what stories are we telling and re-telling? More to the point, what stories are we buying? And what stories are we re-living?

The challenge is to see the play for what it is. To recognize the players in our own mythology. The heroes. And the villains.

And the bigger challenge? To re-write the story and change the ending. To become the heroes of our own lives. To rescue ourselves instead of looking for someone else to do the heavy lifting.

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. – T.S. Eliot

Everyday Heroes

I went to the beach earlier this week to watch the sunset over Lake Michigan. While I was there I heard a guy who was out in the water start to argue with his girlfriend. As the discussion escalated, he began cursing at her and criticizing her weight – I never heard her say a word from where I was sitting.

It was disturbing and painful to listen to. In fact, I was getting ready to leave when an older man sitting in a lawn chair called out to the young man and told him to watch his mouth.

He then actually got out of his chair and walked partway out into the water toward the younger man. He again asked him to watch his language, or leave, because there were children present. He gestured toward at least a dozen little kids playing on the beach within earshot.

I didn’t hear another word out of the younger guy the entire time I was there.

I think everyone – it was mostly women and children on the beach – breathed a sigh of relief.

And that guy in the lawn chair? He’s an everyday hero.

Forgiveness

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” – Mark Twain

As a follow up to the entry on freedom, I want to talk a little about forgiveness, because I think the two are closely related. Forgiveness is a tricky subject because for many people it’s closely connected to religion. But I think from a spiritual perspective forgiveness is less about religion and more about freedom. It’s less about doing than allowing: forgiveness is letting go.

Forgiveness allows you to free yourself.

When I first heard that I wasn’t sure how it was true. I thought forgiveness was freeing the other person. Letting him/her off the hook, so to speak. I didn’t like the sound of that at all. I thought of blame as a sort of punishment.

While I don’t doubt that we can direct a fair amount of energy (and therefore psychic violence) at others by holding on, I want to focus more here on the cost of such behavior to ourselves.

By pouring mental and emotional energy into our own stories (usually stories in which we are the hero and someone else the villain) we are energetically poisoning ourselves. And often, the target of our energies goes on about his or her life entirely unaware.

It’s easy to hold on to the idea of justice, of punishment and retribution. But here’s the thing about justice: it doesn’t bring back what was lost.

Establishing blame doesn’t facilitate healing or growth. It’s just a trap. Marinating in anger, bitterness, and unhappiness will change you, and not for the better.

Now, I’m not advocating martyrdom. I’m certainly not suggesting that through forgiveness we place ourselves in a position to be harmed repeatedly by the same person. Forgiveness doesn’t include amnesia. It doesn’t mean abandoning healthy boundaries.

But it does mean letting go of stories. Or rewriting them. I think it’s possible to be the hero of your own story without making someone else the villain. But maybe that means we need to re-define heroism.

It’s worth taking a few moments to consider this question: What are the qualities of a true hero? And, to take it one step further, how can you manifest those qualities to become the hero of your own story?