A reflection & an insight.

Possibly the strangest post that i’ll ever write and the last post of 2024.

The hero’s quest or hero’s journey.

Note to readers. I’m aware that this is not only an extremely personal post that maybe it would have been better not to write but a very odd take on a story that is well known in terms of psychology and even myth – the hero’s journey – except mine is more about my insight of what came afterwards and which I am only slowly coming to terms with.

The hero’s journey (Wikipedia) .“In narratology and comparitive mythology, the hero’s quest or hero’s journey, also known as the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis and comes home changed or transformed.”

Whether the hero is Odysseus (in the Iliad) , Luke Skywalker in Star Wars or even Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, the hero and his journey is something we can immediately refer to because it is a standard template for good storytelling and used to be the basis of great films until Hollywood decided that such an idea was not only deeply old fashioned and not politically correct enough for a modern audience but deeply misogynist and containing nothing but masculine toxicity. In real terms, ones that we can all enjoy, the template made for great films if nothing else.

In the deep pattern of storytelling Luke Skywalker has to confront (and save) his father and in the Hobbit little timid Bilbo has to confront an actual dragon (Smaug) before making off with the single most precious object, (the Arkenstone) in the entire Dwarven kingdom. Skywalker ultimately defeats the big bad guy (Palpatine) before destroying the ultimate techno-weapon while Bilbo gets to go home to his books, his home and his maps while bearing the most dangerous and sinister object – the one ring. There are many more stories of course and iv’e only picked out the ones that many of my readers would be familiar with.

My own hero journey.

What I think of as my own hero journey isn’t much to talk about when it’s compared with destroying death-stars or confronting dragons but the hero journey does fit when it’s considered as a Jungian archetype – the structure is there and I can’t find a better explanation. Ok so all I did was sail in a big yacht race through the roaring forties and around the Horn and yes I came home transformed although recently iv’e had to ask ‘transformed into what’ as, like Bilbo Baggins I seemed unfit or unsuited for normal life back in The Shire afterwards. That was over half a lifetime ago and I think I spent most of the latter half seeking out weaker and thinner copies of what I once had – be that in the form of a log walking journey through Peter Jackson’s epic portrayal of fictional Middle Earth or similar journeys elsewhere – and hey at least the scenery was epic.

But Bilbo came back restless and dissatisfied and I came back not really fitting into my routine NHS life any more even though I stuck at it for an entire career : I can’t help but think that I should have done something different afterwards – but then we all have regrets and have all made mistakes.

The aftermath – only 35 years too late.

It’s been a very strange year – that much might be obvious from my posts. For the last few years iv’e heard little talk of other peoples hero journeys unless they are doing something in the wrld of sailing that is sponsored and thus corporate – smile for the camera is the most apt description. Instead, there’s been lots of talk about identity although I rarely see the tick box marked ‘sailor/outdoorsman’ although I could, if I so desire identify as a cat – to be honest i’m much more a doggy kind of guy !.

One of the strangest aspects of this year is that I had a strange personal intimation of disaster, and that was even before my strokes. My usual identity as an outdoors kind of dog has largely had to break apart. Anyway….I could be here for ever adding unnecessary ‘filler’ and I find it best to jump straight to the car chase and smashing plate glass window so here goes…..

Iv’e had to find a whole new pattern for my everyday life thus I spend some time (about an hour) lurching around the local lanes – that’s about the limit of my exercise routine, then about the same doing other physical work and after that it’s mental work – I write of course and spend quite a lot of time following various lectures on Youtube or at Peterson Academy where i’m currently following three different lecture series. Recently I had to put one series of lectures on hold for a while as, with my current state of poor attention span, I couldn’t maintain enough concentration to stay with the lecturer for long enough to really retain anything of value.

The main thing that I wanted to talk about today refers back to the lecture series presented by Bishop Robert Barron – his series titled God, the Bible and Humanity. In the second lecture he poses an important question about what is it that we worship or perhaps in more secular language what do we hold to be of the highest value. He uses the example of one of the early Christian thinkers, from memory it was Thomas Aquinas, who said that it usually breaks down to 4 likely things : wealth, power, pleasure and honor : Bishop Barron takes the line that we can pretty well learn everything there is to know about a person by asking that one question – “what do you worship”.

The strange new insight.

A few days ago I extended my normal hour of exercise by walking into town along the canal path – it was a sunny day and given that we’d had a mere 14 minutes of sunshine in the whole month so far it was good to be out kicking through the dry autumn leaves while enjoying a bit of blue sky and sun. I know that i’d been trying to answer the Barron/Aquinas question as honestly as I could and i’d got to the point where my answer was mostly pleasure because my one time hero journey has mostly devolved into low order hedonism, even if that hedonism was only the pleasure of being alone in a quiet anchorage : it still didn’t quite fit though.

It was a sudden and remarkably unbidden insight that a brief period of my life had once been a hero’s journey but had since not only devolved and degraded into something a lot less potent but that the end result of the journey had itself in what Carl Jung would have called psychic inflation, or his former colleague Sigmund Freud would have called ego inflation and ultimately self worship – that the highest thing I was essentially worshiping was an inflated sense of myself – although, in short a persona (sorry, Jung again) and not even the real thing.

The actual back-story. There’s a lot of reflection that I could add but haven’t for various reasons but the one thing I would like to relate is a small incident that happened just before my journey and repeated itself, with some degree of confirmation afterward.

I only put into words once, what I thought it was that was my highest calling, by which I mean my clearest purpose in life, at around the age of 30 – just before I left to join that great adventure. This happened at my late parents former home and took place within the context of a minor disagreement with someone who dealt with my parents insurance policies and suchlike – his point being that I should start to work towards accruing wealth and my counter being that I felt that a life of adventure was a higher goal to aim for. Interestingly, we met again some years afterwards, I remember the insurance agent as being white haired and careworn and he said something to the effect that he admired my choice (or something close to that).

I can’t put into words sufficiently competently how I get from there to now and how I think that my self inflated ego or disproportionately enhanced persona of that time affected my life in the way that it did. I think now, that there was a nit of narcissism involved – after all that’s the best description for enjoying ones own reflection and then lots of inflated pride.

That’s all I have to say about that……..