It is when you are going through the most difficult chapter of your life that your hero is revealed, and how beautiful it is when you finally realize— you have the strength to save yourself.
It is when you are going through the most difficult chapter of your life that your hero is revealed, and how beautiful it is when you finally realize— you have the strength to save yourself.
DODINSKY
Some call it an awakening. Others refer to it as coming out of illusion and into reality. And others find strength in seeing that source energy has rooted itself deep within and given way to our emergence as a more complete being.
Regardless of explanation and nomenclature, at some point or another, we all find ourselves digging deep within to solve our greatest cause of grief, turmoil and dissatisfaction in life. Usually this happens when we are backed into the proverbial corner and no other solution remains. People describe it as rock bottom. I assume that metaphor is chosen to convey that there is clearly no lower status that can be achieved.
What if the rock bottom metaphor means in actuality that you have found your foundation from which to return? You have found that core strength upon which to stand tall and proud and emerge as an ever more luminous being than what you are currently exhibiting?
Hollywood conditions us (as has all literature prior) to believe in the white knight who rides in on the white steed with heroic proportion to save the day. Yet, in reality, that is seldom the case. In reality, it is most often times we who are the hero. We find our internal resolution that continuing in status quo will not suffice and we dig our proverbial heels in and make a stand. It lacks most of the fantastical heroic fanfare that fiction uses to celebrate such a moment. Most often, it is a quiet moment of desperation in which every alternate opportunity has been discarded in favor of the option that is at hand.
Then with a resolute fortitude, we quietly go about making the changes necessary. There is no rush of climactic music to celebrate the event. There is no montage music showing us making each of the steps needed to become our own hero. More often than not, it is a private moment, known by very few… if any, other than ourselves.
Yet, despite the lack of dramatic accoutrement, there is a galvanizing charge that comes with this quiet experience. There is the internal knowledge that we, ourselves, had the power all along. Dorothy clicked her red ruby slippers and said, “there’s no place like home,” and soon, she had solved her odyssey in Oz and was back in her bed in Kansas. It is a crude metaphor for what I am expressing, but it will suffice. Rocky Balboa is so tired of being a bum, that when life delivers him the inconceivable opportunity for redemption, he digs within and finds that courage to wake up into the champion he wished he was.
And so do we. In our moments of quiet desperation, there is only one hero coming to save the day, and that hero is us.
If you believe you need saving, take a long look at yourself in the mirror and think it through. That hero is looking back at you in that moment begging you to take the necessary steps for survival. When you see it for what it is, it truly is a beautiful experience.
Happy Tuesday!
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