“Thought of the Week” for December 28, 1998
First you must understand yourself
When you try to understand everything, you will understand nothing. It is best to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.
Shunryu Suzuki
Comment:
To know your journey
is to know yourself
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1998 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
I often begin seminars on the Hero’s Journey with the wonderful Taoist story about a poor farmer whose horse, his only possession of value, breaks out of his corral and runs away. His neighbors console him, telling him what an unlucky event this was. The farmer responds only, “Unlucky? We’ll see.”
Several days later, the horse returns, bringing with it several beautiful wild horses. The farmer’s neighbors come over to congratulate him on his good luck. The farmer responds only, “Lucky? We’ll see.” A few days later, the farmer’s only son is trying to break one of the wild horses so that it can be sold. The boy is thrown and fractures his leg. The neighbors come by to console the farmer on his terrible luck. The farmer responds, “Unlucky? We’ll see.”
One evening a week or so later, there is a thundering knock on the farmer’s door. When he opens the door he finds half dozen imperial soldiers outside. It seems that there is to be a bloody war in the north, and they are conscripting all young men for the battle. “You have a son, and he must come with us,” they tell the farmer. “I do have a son,” the farmer says, “but as you can see, he has a badly broken leg and cannot walk.” The soldiers leave without the son. In the morning, the neighbors come by to congratulate the farmer on his good luck. “Lucky,” the farmer says. “We’ll see.”
The point is that it is foolish to judge experiences good, bad or otherwise. There really is no “meaning” to an experience. Events just “are,” and we supply their meaning from within ourselves, based on the interpretations supplied by the “myths” we have chosen to live, by the masks (or persona, as Jung would call them) we have chosen to wear. Because what “happens to us” is, in this view, the result of who we are, the better we understand ourselves, the better we will be able to build constructive, life-enhancing meaning from our experiences.
Suzuki’s words seem to capture the essence of this idea. In a sense he is saying, “know thyself and you will know thy life.” This, to me, is an essential theme in the Heroic Journey: our quests are the tracks of the ever-expanding outward spiral we create when we dissolve the boundaries of the self and incorporate experiences into an understanding of life and of ourselves. Great literature and film provide us with both the maps and the means for this expansion. They show the struggle of great minds to weave a tapestry of understanding from the seemingly random threads of life. What’s more, this struggle, this exploration, follows always the pattern of the Journey.
When you teach students the pattern of the heroic journey, you give them a map to understanding both literature and their lives. As Suzuki says, we need not “understand everything.” We need only embrace our journey, the marvelous process of understanding ourselves. When we do, the “understanding” of life will follow as naturally as day follows night.
The Hero’s Journey: To know your journey, know yourself
“Thought of the Week” for December 28, 1998
First you must understand yourself
When you try to understand everything, you will understand nothing. It is best to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.
Shunryu Suzuki
Comment:
To know your journey
is to know yourself
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1998 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
I often begin seminars on the Hero’s Journey with the wonderful Taoist story about a poor farmer whose horse, his only possession of value, breaks out of his corral and runs away. His neighbors console him, telling him what an unlucky event this was. The farmer responds only, “Unlucky? We’ll see.”
Several days later, the horse returns, bringing with it several beautiful wild horses. The farmer’s neighbors come over to congratulate him on his good luck. The farmer responds only, “Lucky? We’ll see.” A few days later, the farmer’s only son is trying to break one of the wild horses so that it can be sold. The boy is thrown and fractures his leg. The neighbors come by to console the farmer on his terrible luck. The farmer responds, “Unlucky? We’ll see.”
One evening a week or so later, there is a thundering knock on the farmer’s door. When he opens the door he finds half dozen imperial soldiers outside. It seems that there is to be a bloody war in the north, and they are conscripting all young men for the battle. “You have a son, and he must come with us,” they tell the farmer. “I do have a son,” the farmer says, “but as you can see, he has a badly broken leg and cannot walk.” The soldiers leave without the son. In the morning, the neighbors come by to congratulate the farmer on his good luck. “Lucky,” the farmer says. “We’ll see.”
The point is that it is foolish to judge experiences good, bad or otherwise. There really is no “meaning” to an experience. Events just “are,” and we supply their meaning from within ourselves, based on the interpretations supplied by the “myths” we have chosen to live, by the masks (or persona, as Jung would call them) we have chosen to wear. Because what “happens to us” is, in this view, the result of who we are, the better we understand ourselves, the better we will be able to build constructive, life-enhancing meaning from our experiences.
Suzuki’s words seem to capture the essence of this idea. In a sense he is saying, “know thyself and you will know thy life.” This, to me, is an essential theme in the Heroic Journey: our quests are the tracks of the ever-expanding outward spiral we create when we dissolve the boundaries of the self and incorporate experiences into an understanding of life and of ourselves. Great literature and film provide us with both the maps and the means for this expansion. They show the struggle of great minds to weave a tapestry of understanding from the seemingly random threads of life. What’s more, this struggle, this exploration, follows always the pattern of the Journey.
When you teach students the pattern of the heroic journey, you give them a map to understanding both literature and their lives. As Suzuki says, we need not “understand everything.” We need only embrace our journey, the marvelous process of understanding ourselves. When we do, the “understanding” of life will follow as naturally as day follows night.