Democracy: The Hero’s Journey.
Every story you love probably follows a formula explained by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. It lays out the narrative by which the ordinary becomes the Extraordinary. From Star Wars to Spiderman, the road to becoming a hero always bears certain hallmarks:
The Call to Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Meeting the Mentor
Crossing the Threshold
Test, Allies and Enemies
The Ordeal/The Reward
The Road Back
The Resurrection
And finally, the Return.
Democracy in the US is on this path.
And you are ALL part of the story.
The Revolutionary War was the Call to Adventure.
The Civil War was the first threshold.
WW2 was tests, allies, and enemies.
The Civil Rights Movement was The Ordeal.
We are near the end of The Ordeal.
The Ordeal is the part of the story where the hero realizes the they must become someone different if the story is going to continue. This is the defining moment for most heroes; the part where all hope is lost, and in order for the story to continue, they have to live up to their potential. It requires the courage to admit who you really are, the strength to sacrifice the parts of your past which no longer serve you, and the resolve to forge forward, and become what the story requires.
In individuals this can play out over a lifetime. In countries it can play out over centuries.
You did not ask to be in this crucial part of the story any more than the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, or MLK. Each played their part, reluctantly at first, in order to form a more perfect union. All knew the work would not be completed in their lifetimes.
Just like we may never see The Return in ours.
The most we can hope to do is our own part in helping this country become the Hero in its own story. To put the US on The Road Back, so generations that follow can someday return with The Elixir:
A functioning democracy that represents the will of the people.
We stand at the fulcrum of the juncture. This is The Abyss, and Transformation is required if we’re going to see this path to the end. It’s not the moment you triumph over your problems that defines you; it’s the moment you choose to fight on once you’ve realize that you probably won’t win and you have nothing left to give.
This is the closest the Hero will get to death; the point either they change or they become the Villain.
The thing about grand heroics is: it’s the moment that’s grand, not the action. By the time a hero’s moment arrives, they’ve invested thousands of hours in ordinary, obscure decency. It’s only the spotlight of circumstance that makes a grand accomplishment, extraordinary. For the person who’s made it a practice, the act of bravery, self-sacrifice, or deep insight is as unremarkable to them as their own breath.
The situation is normal. The circumstances are extraordinary.
Things are bad right now; maybe as bad as they’ve ever been but nowhere close to as bad as it can get. History calls on us. The story pivots on what we do next. Today, find decency, kindness, compassion, integrity, and honor in everything you do.
If democracy is ever going to become a thing, the onus of the moment is on us, right now.
