The Hero's Journey of Growth

First published on September 5, 2019

I was thinking earlier today about the trapeze. I've never seen expert trapeze artists in person but - because of part of my partiality to a Batman comic as a young man (and Robin's origin story) - it feels like I've always been aware of them.

Here's what I was thinking: it takes daring, and there must be almost nothing like the moment - in particular - where you have let go of one trapeze and are in the air. Your experience and training tells you you will reach out and catch the next trapeze. But for that moment, suspended in the air above the circus floor, what must that be like?

Then, I realised, I know a little about what it's like.

At a workshop I was at recently, psychologist Robert Holden talked about his passion for the Hero's Journey, the archetypal story made popular by Joseph Campbell and more recently by Brené Brown. This story is the cycle that so many of the stories that humans love goes through. It is the origin story of Robin, as well as Batman and Spider-Man. It is almost every (maybe literally every!) Pixar movie. It is Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and His Dark Materials.

And it is every story of personal growth.

In the Hero's Journey, the hero leaves her home, steps over the threshold. And in the Hero's Journey, the hero faces darkness. In this moment, the hero is between two trapezes. No matter how many Hero's Journeys we have faced in our lives - and, if you look closely, you are likely to have faced several - in this moment there is a deep fear: I might not get out of this alive.

And that is because you won't. The you that started the Hero's Journey - that left the Shire, that decided to pursue the person who killed Uncle Ben - is gone once you cross the threshold. The you that sets out on the Hero's Journey will not return. A different you will return. I promise you this. But, you can't skip the moment between the trapezes.

In order to cross the threshold, you have to be aware: this might not work. I don't know what is going to happen here. You have to let go of the trapeze. Each time you do that in your life, you go through a valve, you see something you can never unsee, you change.

You don't know as you do that that you will catch the other trapeze. You can't. If you know for sure that you are going to catch it, then it isn't a Hero's Journey at all. This might not work is a requirement for growth.

But that doesn't make it easy. That doesn't make the letting go of one Self, the You that left the Shire, is pleasant or easy. In fact, it can be horrible and hard. On the other side, though, you have the thrill of catching the trapeze. I was there, suspended, held by the universe in chaos and openness and this might not work. And now here I am, attached to a trapeze again, or standing on the platform with the applause of the audience ringing in my ears.

Adult Development Theory is a field of psychology concerned with the ways that adults' psychology develops over their lifetimes, drawing them into greater perspective and more complex ways of making meaning of the world. Some Adult Development theorists say that our level of development is dependent on what the world asks of us. If the world asks us to step up, then sometimes we are pulled into a developmental change. This is what happens in the Hero's Journey. We hear the call. Often, we refuse the call, but it comes again.

We are called to cross the threshold, to see new perspectives. And it feels scary, when the world asks us to step up. It feels uncomfortable. It feels knotty.

You won't get out of that journey alive, not the You that enters. But we need you to step up. The world is calling you. Be brave, and trust. Trust that supernatural aid will be there when you need it.