One of the messages of Joseph Campbell’s work was that there are two ways of living your life; one is to stay safe in your original community, and the other is to venture out into the unknown. He says, “Here, if you venture out, you will live a life of danger, of creativity.” He calls it “the hero’s journey,” and says, “You will bring forth something that was never brought forth before.”
When I first read those words, I was pretty young, and I had no idea what “bringing forth” even meant. And the only thing I wanted to bring forth was to be thin and meet a guy. (Preferably tall.)
And then at some point in my more mature years, I read the words of the Roman historian Tacitus. He said, “The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”
And I knew in my heartest of hearts my desire for safety was almost pathological. And that I would never have any great or noble enterprise. Which was totally fine with me, if the tradeoff was guaranteed safety.
I’m afraid I’ve written this a million times. Sorry for the repetition, but it’s my trauma and my column.
My father died in a minute in front of me when I was 15. I know that explains my need for control. “This will never happen to me again” became my inner mantra. If I control everything in my world, I can keep my world predictable.
In the early years of my marriage, when my husband would make a phone call, I would sit right next to him and tell him what to say. Even though he knew exactly what to say.
And when my son Dan was bar mitzvahed, I chose his outfit: a white linen jacket and white jeans, a skinny black leather tie, and white sneaks. I don’t know if he had anything in mind that he wanted to wear. I never asked.
I chose the restaurants, the movies, the TV shows we watched. I picked out the colors for our walls, our rugs, our clothes.
I chose our friends, our cars, our vacations.
I have a memory of what our social calendar looked like. I had every square filled in. If I didn’t have a plan on a Saturday night, I worried. I always had to know what was happening at any given moment. No randomness was safe.
And then in 1977, I read “Be Here Now,” by Ram Dass, a book that changed my life. (Another story I have told you a million times, but hey …) It was the catalyst for my personal transformation. It was mostly about being present. I had no idea what being present even meant, since I was always thinking about the past (what I should have said, what I should have done) or thinking about the future (what I will do, what I plan to do, what I might do). Finding out there was an actual moment that was NOW was so far from my reality. And yet when I started to consciously watch when I was thinking instead of being, I realized you can’t be in the moment and be thinking about the next moment at the same time.
At 15, after the shocking death of my father, I could have become the kind of person my husband is: someone who understands that nothing is permanent, so why try to change the way things are? He knows (and all of you people who are not control freaks know) things will simply change on their own. It’s the nature of things. No point pushing a boulder up a mountain.
But I became a scaredy-cat who thought if I made all the decisions for absolutely everyone, I would be safe. It turns out nothing could be farther from the truth.
Safety from sorrow is an impossibility. Safety from failure is a fantasy. Safety from unexpected tragedy is make-believe. And learning those facts (even late in life) is a weight that freed me up.
Somewhere in about year 20 of our marriage, my husband said, I don’t want to have plans every weekend. In fact, I don’t want to have plans at all. Can’t we just do nothing?
Frightened, but knowing he was right, I stopped filling up those squares. I began my own hero’s journey of sorts. And I saw how not knowing what was coming was actually liberating. And I experienced magic for the first time. Spontaneity could be unplanned joy. Choosing safety was a creativity killer. Not venturing out of my comfort zone was a prison of my own making.
The world is filled with people who are risk-takers. People who run for office who have never been in politics, folks who go back to school in their 60s and get their GEDs, seniors in their 70s who apply to art school, women joining the military, men taking yoga training, just shaking things up enough to push boundaries and take chances.
What I’ve learned in my dotage (from my husband and all the non-control-freaks in my life) is since there’s no guarantee that things will go my way, I might as well go with whatever way things go.
It’s never too late to embark on your own hero’s journey.