The spirals of our lives bring us back again. And yet, almost always, it's different.
I’ve been here before.
The spirals of our lives bring us back again. And again.
And yet, almost always, it’s different.
Returning to an old workplace as my current self.
Being back in the bust of one of the cycles of the entrepreneur.
Noticing those same parts of me that were scared 37 years ago, or 30 years ago, being scared now.
Back here again, and yet not exactly the same.
At least, not usually.
In Joseph Campbell’s archetypal myth, The Hero’s Journey, The Refusal of the Call marks the moment when our hero doesn’t accept the call to adventure which, underneath, is a call to transform.
That, perhaps, is the one return which may be the same.
I’ve been here before, on this precipice. Will I step over this time?
But otherwise, when we spiral back to the same place, it’s not quite the same.
I’m not who I was when I worked here.
I’m not the same me I was last time my business struggled.
I’m not my two-year-old or nine-year-old self.
I’m not the me I was a few months ago when my cool slipped in a workshop.
I’m not the me I was yesterday, even.
That, of course, is why it is possible that the Hero doesn’t refuse the call the second time, or the third time, or the fourth time. Because each time is different. Each time, he or she has to choose.
I have an idea that our culture doesn’t deal so well with the final part of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: The Return.
In The Return, we come back to our community, bringing with us the wisdom or the fruits of our adventure.
We come back to reality, back from Mordor to the Shire.
And it only counts, really counts, if things are different in the real world after our journey.
Our adventures in Narnia count for almost nothing if they don’t make a difference in our own community.
But it’s hard to have lived into old age as a Queen of Narnia only to have to return to being a little girl.
Hard to remember, even, how much it mattered.
How magical it was.
Hard to remember all the things you used to deal with, all the things you should now know you are capable of…
Hard to remember any of that when the world is closing in on us, when the burnout is sparking, when the bleakness is here.
And yet, we did once go to Narnia.
And no matter what happens, no one can take that away from us.
We will always be the hobbits who left the Shire.
I’ve been here before.
Maybe I will be again.
But I won’t be the same. Not quite.
Because I won’t refuse the call.
—
PS My best coaching work often happens with leaders dealing with the complexities of a team and ambitions to create change. You can read more about what is at the core of much of that work in my latest long-read article: Leading With Honour.
This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Buy the 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, here.