Stories of heroes surround us from history to pop culture to the neighbor next door. The stories of heroes who have done monumental things and changed the course of the world to stories of heroes who overcame a personal struggle. In the book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the reader finds compilation of a lifetime of work by Joseph Campbell. The idea that Campbell puts forth is that of a monomyth, that as humans we are hardwired for hero stories, that life is a hero’s journey. So if the human existence\u00a0is that of the hero’s journey then these stories are not simply meant for someone else, they are meant for you and for me. Yet, we cling to the stories of others avoiding our own because it is easier to see the story of someone else which has an ending than to face the unknown ending of our own.<\/p>\n
Campbell writes in his book “The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth.” Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization.” [1] There is an “agony of breaking” that is a part of the hero’s journey it is a precursor to growth or the next part of the journey. It is a breaking of the personal limitations, the barriers that are self imposed.<\/p>\n
So often as leaders we are striving to hold things together; to hold our lives together, to hold our organization together, our families, the lives of others, and all the responsibilities that are placed on a leader we hold them together. As leaders we often fear the breaking apart of things and we will sacrifice ourselves on the alter of holding it all together thinking that will make us a hero. It will surely make us a martyr; a hero faces the “agony of breaking through”<\/p>\n
Throughout nature we see the need for breaking in order for something new to be born. Massive forest are reborn from fire, diamonds are formed through heat and pressure, babies are born through pain and agony, mountain ranges are formed through. earthquakes and the breaking of new ground. Yet, as humans we try to avoid this growth and rebirth unless we can see it in the story of another, a hero we can cheer for from the sideline. The world needs leaders who are willing to travel the hero’s journey and break through, break free of the barriers and forge a new way forward.<\/p>\n
So, leaders let us not be the martyr of holding everything together, let us be willing to let some things break, let us be willing to lay some things aside, and let us be willing to journey forward through life like the heroes that we are.<\/p>\n
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[1] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em> (Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2020), 163.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stories of heroes surround us from history to pop culture to the neighbor next door. The stories of heroes who have done monumental things and changed the course of the world to stories of heroes who overcame a personal struggle. In the book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the reader finds compilation of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2416],"class_list":["post-29245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-campbell-dlgp01","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29265,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29245\/revisions\/29265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}