Shoulder Companions

Years ago, I come across the idea of the hero’s journey. You can find this idea all over the place… in biblical stories like Moses wandering for 40 years in the desert or Daniel in the lions’ den. Journeys such as these also form the plots of a lot of fiction and nonfiction as well as in the story lines of movies and tv shows. My idea is that you can also see this hero's journey in the quiet and maybe not so quiet struggles of the world and of all individual people as well. I used to think of it as I watched students getting themselves to school every single day in spite of serious "complications" at home and/or surrounding them. These journeys are complicated - the lines and barriers are not always clearly defined or easily managed.

Anyway -- the idea of the hero’s journey is that a person enters into a period of trial that involves struggle – physical, mental or emotional. Throughout the journey, the individual learns lessons -hopefully coming out at the end as a better person. These quests do not always have a happy ending though and sometimes it is difficult - or even seemingly impossible - to define goals or to discover which path(s) to take. Choices that once seem defined become blurred. The struggles take on different characteristics – sometimes involving the ways of the world or other people in it. Differences in cultures, beliefs, traditions may blur or overlap in complicated ways.

People finding their way through a pandemic strike me as being on a hero’s journey. Hopefully we have all learned positive lessons from the experience including important lessons about ourselves and the world we live in.

People moving through periods of grief and change are on a journey as well. Hopefully they will find their way and be stronger and perhaps even more compassionate in some way in the end. (Sometimes it is hard/seemingly impossible to find the positive at times like these.)

Focus now on Americans in the week of an important election. The results are still coming in as I write. We as Americans are finding our way through difficult times. We are on a journey. We need to make the best of it and learn. Unlike many in the world, we do have a say in how we will come out at the end of the journey. Hopefully we will begin to work together and in strength continue on our way. Americans are a strong people.  

I do believe that everyone has an important journey - not just heroes … that perhaps just living is in some way heroic at times. Choices become magnified again and again. So do consequences.  Others believe that all human struggles are heroic and that all human beings have hero potential. Either way – we all have challenges ahead. Hopefully we, as Americans, can stand shoulder to shoulder and face them together.  Americans are known to be a strong, generous people who cherish their hard won freedoms. We understand differences of opinion and ways of doing things.  Our country is a melting pot in the best sense of the term. We need to step up and out of the complicated and divisive political muck of the times – and sort it out together as people who cherish freedoms. We can do this. We can be “shoulder companions” and move forward to a better and stronger America, a tolerant America that values all Americans. 

Now is another time to focus on what we all have in common rather than on differences we may have or may have had. We are all in this together.