FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER AND THE FRONTIER MINDSET

In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932), then a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, published an essay in the American Historical Association's Annual Report for 1893, titled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” The essay made a splash at the time and was much discussed within the world of historical scholars. Jackson went on the teach and publish articles on his ideas about the frontier and the evolution of sections (the idea that defined cultural groups had distinct settlement patterns) in American history. Even though his scholarly output was not considered large, his few essays on the topics of frontier and section made an impact on how historians of American history viewed its development. It is my opinion that the 1893 essay has implications for our times far beyond what even Turner might have imagined.

I first was introduced to this essay as a junior in high school in a course that combined American history (using Morison and Commager's The Growth of the American Republic as a textbook) and American literature (here it was Bradley, Beatty, and Long's American Tradition in Literature). This was a year-long course that more resembled a college course than one for high school. Yet, it gave us an opportunity to survey the grand scope of American history and to weave into its crevices the literature that emerged from the relatively short span of time from our founding to its maturity back in 1963. Of course, we have come a long way in time since then, but there are some aspects of our history that still stream in the consciousness of the 21^st century. I don't think we can make coherent sense of who we are as a people and how our society is evolving without the perspective that our collective history offers us. I believe that a close look at Turner's essay of 1893 provides that perspective and raises more questions about our collective civic life today than it answers. But it is within those questions that we are able to gather together the threads of what the frontier mindset meant in 1893 and what it means for us today. I have pondered just why this particular point in our history has stayed with me all these years, why it made such an impression on me. I think it has something to do with the discovery in that history/literature course that history is an ongoing story, but that we are heirs to how it has unfolded. When it is said that we don't “learn” from history and so are destined to repeat it, it seems to me that we are always repeating aspects of history because it is a documentation of human behavior and that will always be repeated. I was struck by how Turner was able to use a data point of information and weave the information into the grand saga of a nation growing and pushing against its boundaries. The fact that what he was documenting had already passed was also of interest to me because he was able to pull us into the history that was then unfolding as he wrote. I was learning about how to view history and to see it as a narrative of human behavior in the particular context of the settlement of America, a bold experiment in all aspects. It was an exciting discovery at that stage of my life and remains so today to imagine the frontiers that we now believe we are conquering.

Frontier exploration and settlement lasted quite a short period of time in our history and Turner begins his essay noting that the 1890 bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census stated that “up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.” And so the idea of “frontier” was no longer included in the periodic census. Turner's short essay didn't document the incredibly rich and complex movement that became the push towards western settlement. It was a short essay that sketched the outlines of that surge as a series of waves and it is this metaphor of fluidity and streaming that describes the settlement of the West and supports the frontier mindset that persists to this day. The coursing of that stream was a continuation of the character that had landed small loads of ship passengers on our shores at the beginning of our history as a nation. Massively underexplored, it beckoned those frontiersmen out beyond the small settlements they inhabited. Just imagine the risk and attendant excitement with which they set out into lands for which they had no maps and little foreknowledge. Surely, they were a proud bunch, self-assertive and self-reliant, mobile, egalitarian, sometimes coarse, inquisitive, inventive, restless, dominant individuals, buoyant with the freedom of open vistas, acquisitive in their desire to own land and to obtain the greater material comforts that independent investment promised.

But what of the “frontier”? What was this space, this “wilderness”? I think the unknown of the frontier and its conquest probably exaggerated the character traits of those men and women who took the risks of its exploration and settlement. They survived and so reinforced those tendencies survival required to make a life in a clear-cut forest, far away from neighbors, dependent on the land and what skills they had to make a living. It wasn't until later that any notion of community became an option and so inventiveness and self-defense were the only ways to survive in the wilderness, at the frontier line. With time, the waves of settlement consolidated into what Turner called “sections,” collections and communities often based on shared ethnocultural traditions. But it seems to me that what had made survival possible for individuals and families was easily transferred to their larger communities of shared interests and commercial activities. The character traits of the frontiersmen and women had by then become deeply embedded in the American character. I think it is some of those traits that we see now among our fellow citizens in a time when nationalism and a turn to the protections of tribalism are resurgent.

Today, of course, we have no more “frontier” to settle. In fact, the opposite is the case: there are population expansions in cities that put pressure on goods and services and, in rural areas, a consolidation of agricultural land in a few hands that monopolize production and distribution of food crops. Today, our frontier consists of a mindset that challenges exploration and discovery in realms very different from those of our early history. While there may still be some appetite for conquering lands and peoples (and even extending to the colonization of distant planets and moons), those lands and peoples are far removed from our national borders and do not represent the same peaceable intentions frontier settlers had. Fear today causes us to mount fearful defenses against mostly manufactured threats. Fear of others different from ourselves now motivates people of power and influence but this is far from how Turner characterized the sentiments and attitudes of democracy as egalitarianism, individualism, and idealism. He saw democracy more as a world view than as forms of institutions. In this regard, he was characterizing the frontier as a mindset and not as land to be settled or conquered. He was describing the American people as inventive and resilient.

Turner's ideas about the development of sections also implied what those villages and cities were to become; often breeding grounds of social stratification, income disparities, enclave isolation, and patterns of political power and influence. There was often an absence of mutuality or of common and collective effort. Individualism as a trait supported private action as a premium and painted governmental action as “interference.” Individualism was often associated with a high tolerance for deviance, eccentricity, nonconformity, privacy, and dissent at many levels of the civic collective. It is some of these qualities that I think we see exaggerated now on our national stage and on the stages of other national governments. We have celebrated those qualities of individuals that make them attractive to the common imagination. We see a conformity of thought and action that seems to be the opposite of what we consider to be the traits that created the great western expansion. There is a sense that our notion of frontier has created a culture of conformity, complacency, and intolerance. Those who identify with the dark shadow side of “frontier” foster a speculative spirit, the exploitation and waste of precious resources for commercial gain, the desecration of natural beauty, the stratification of classes, petty capitalism, and tolerance of violence and ruthlessness. This, for some, is what it means to be a “rugged individualist” and to answer the call to full citizenship.

But we no longer live in a frontier society as defined by those individualists. Our frontiers lie before us at the horizons of philosophy, mathematics, the arts, education, physics, chemistry, neuroscience, genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, space exploration (to name just a few of the long list of disciplines and realms of thought), and the interweaving of multiple disciplines that challenge contemporary thinking about what is possible for humans to achieve. I suggest that these frontiers require the same traits and characteristics that motivated the earliest settlers on the land. They require that we not allow those traits of achievement to lapse over into the shadow areas that all good virtues possess. We must climb to the high places where our efforts can support all people in their hopes and dreams for a better life, the frontier mindset that brings all people along in the stream of progress.

Enmeshed in our history and national character are traits that favor the shadow side of the human condition we share with all people over the millennia of existence: slavery, racial injustice, economic and ethnic oppression, warmongering, fear of the “other.” The side of the human condition exposed to the light favors the traits that the frontiers fostered: individual initiative, egalitarianism, the ideal of a land where all people have access to opportunities. Turner described the physical expansion of America as waves and it is in this spirit that we can now see that we are able to participate in such a streaming by choice. We can choose to favor the light or the dark side of our character and we can do this because we live in a democracy that shapes its people and is, in turn, shaped by them. Citizens have the opportunity to use the forms and institutions of government to support their choices. We no longer have new lands to settle, but we do have the frontier mindset to carry us into new realms of discovery. We have to confront our frustrated individualism as a myth of the 21^st century, just as frontier individualism became a myth after such a short period of our history. It is equally important, I think, to consider to what extent we continue to support the idea of sectionalism which becomes isolationism. Sectionalism tears at the fabric of democracy as surely as a mythical and exaggerated individualism does. Sectionalism is the new tribalism, nationalism, and white supremacy. But sectionalism can unite groups of people in communities of social change and cooperation. We have choices we can make and the strongest statements of national sentiment are made at the ballot box. Hopefully, all citizens will have the opportunity to have their say and the fabrications of gerrymandering in the body politic and minds of the politicians elected to serve will not prevail.

I suppose what I have said is that we are a nation of diverse opinion and as a nation we must confront and acknowledge our darkest shadows. We must work to mend the fabric of democracy and once again support the deepest and broadest virtues that continue to shape American society. Perhaps we can return to the virtues of kindness and fairness and service for all. Frederick Jackson Turner opened our eyes to what the “frontier” offered and we can choose the best parts of that tradition to continue to shape our republic for all citizens. We are still a stream of transitioning forces. Where are we headed? Where will the stream carry us?

JOHN MUIR, CANNY CONSERVATIONIST

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”

Wendell Berry, Given

There are many lenses through which we can view the life and work of John Muir. And there are many lenses through which he viewed his own life. Of course, all of the lenses view the parts of a whole life and are interdependent, as are the various lenses of our own lives. By knowing some of the lenses of his life, we are able to observe how we think about them and, thus, to make a determination about what to think. This has been the point of most of the little meditations for our classes and in seeing how we think we are exercising and training our attention through the practice of meditation. Every person's life we engage deeply enough can be seen through a number of such lenses. Our own lives are equally interesting and an amalgam of images through different lenses.

I have chosen John Muir (1838-1914) for this piece because a long-term interest in his life, but also because I think his life illustrates concern for issues that are immediately present for us in the 21^st century. I am not certain that these issues could be considered “fault lines,” as that seems to refer to semi-permanent, if not permanent, gaps in society inhabited on either side by entrenched interests. But there are some recurrent themes in the history of modern times that emerge, then settle back, then reemerge. One of these themes is the fate of our planet. It is no small matter that we are beginning to pay more attention to climate change and the ways in which human activity and behavior are altering how the earth and its life-sustaining encircling envelope of forces is responding to us. John Muir devoted his adult life to comforting and protecting Mother Nature in ways that were new to the public at the time but which today would be considered part of the package of the environmental resistance movement, so used are we now to the civil resistance actions of the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-war Movement during the Vietnam War, the #MeToo Movement of recent years, sit-ins, protests, demonstrations, and even immolations. But in Muir's time, there were only a few tactics that could be used to get the public's attention and those included back room arm-twisting in governmental suites. To a certain extent, then and now, the success of a movement depended on media coverage and the voice of a charismatic personality. John Muir, with the help of his friend Robert Underwood Johnson of The Century Magazine, became the voice of environmental consciousness.

Muir didn't begin his work as a fully formed activist. His background was Calvinist with a transition to the ideas of the Transcendentalists (Wordsworth, Emerson, Thoreau, and Walter Rollins Brooks) who believed that matter and spirit were in harmony and never more so than in nature. He explored woods, meadows, and bogs wherever he traveled. But it was an accidental eye injury in 1867 that nearly blinded him that brought him to a new purpose of spending his life studying plants. From then on, he traveled and wrote about his experiences in nature. When he settled in San Francisco he explored the Yosemite Valley, climbing its peaks and being ecstatically thrilled by all its beauty. He traveled to Alaska, British Columbia, the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba, and Panama. Everywhere he went he was embedded in nature. His writings detailing his travels and experiences have the feel of an evangelist and that is what he was to become. He was a popularizer of nature's beauty and expansiveness before he became an advocate for her vulnerable resources. The writings documenting his travels were from the perspective of the micro- and the macro-, detailing both the diversity of flora and the immense spans of her valleys and mountains, as well as the mercurial nature of her weather moods.

Would it be too much of a stretch or too much hyperbole to say that Muir's own coming of age was an evolving experience from rapture to rupture? I ask the question that way to emphasize how I see the maturation of the human experience from the pure innocence of childhood to the realities of life's vicissitudes and exigencies. It is acceptable even in our times to refer to the “innocence” of childhood and its loss as we grow older and get roughened around the edges by our frictions and contacts with other people and events. Environmentalists are prone to lamenting such losses as if they were, indeed, a subtraction from our lives. I happen to see this as a normal progression through life, with each of us growing into some version of adulthood that accommodates the inevitable changes we all experience. Instead of seeing this as a loss, I see it as a gain in perspective and a normal and healthy way to grow older. Here is Muir in the glory of his childhood (from The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, 1913):

“This sudden plash into pure wildness—baptism in Nature's warm heart—how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without knowing it we still were in school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not whipped but charmed into us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and pure in the very prime of the spring when Nature's pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping time with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!”

John Muir was as innocent as any one of us in childhood and maintained some of that guileless charm as he matured and became a spokesperson for the integrity of the earth. In fact, my reading of his life's story leads me to suspect that his quirkiness also included a conscious effort to be the showman and publicizer of the natural phenomena he was attempting to save. In this way, he was demonstrating a willingness to compromise his own jubilant acceptance of truth and beauty in service of conserving and preserving what he could of Nature's body, a body increasingly vulnerable to the economic interests of shortsighted politicians and aggressive and acquisitive developers.

There is no question that there were tensions in Muir's life and that compromises might have come with some difficulty, as they seem to do for someone whose causes are supported by passion and scope. Muir's religious background in Calvinism and its severities transitioned to the more open and welcoming philosophy of the Transcendentalists and he found within that system of thought a comfortable combination of focus on matter and spirit. He learned to work within the real world of politics by cultivating relationships with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and the people in positions of legislative influence and power. He wasn't always successful in overcoming the waves of zeal and energy that exploitation of the “frontier” of America brought to the lives of its citizens. To some extent, Americans in the early years of the 20^th century were enamored of the myth of the frontier (based almost solely on an essay by Frederick Jackson Turner) and the can-do spirit of the people who explored it and conquered it. There are vestiges of this mythical mindset even today in the minds of those who believe that any country can live and thrive without cooperating and compromising on issues of national importance. There was, and is, a blindness to the reality of our interdependence among nations and peoples. Muir was cognizant of the interdependence that he witnessed in nature and acknowledged it in his efforts to preserve Nature's health and integrity. He was no stranger to compromise when he took up the cause of the Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park.

Developers were eager to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley and the Tuolumne River, especially after the devastating earthquake and subsequent fires of 1906, when the water needs of the city of San Francisco proved their reservoirs to be woefully inadequate. Yosemite National Park had been established by then (1890), as had the Sierra Club (1892) with Muir as its president (and Muir to serve for several decades). Muir led the opposition to such engineering and had both presidents Roosevelt and Taft on his side but the lobbyists for the project overcame the opposition and convinced President Woodrow Wilson to authorize the dam into law in 1913. John Muir was to live only one more year but it must have been a heartbreaking event for him. It was one more demonstration that compromises and the events they lead to are not always of one's liking and may, indeed, result in harmful consequences and destruction. With increasingly dwindling natural resources and a large world population, we are facing many of the same compromises Muir faced with perhaps greater consequences for greater numbers of people. Yet, who could argue against a water supply for thousands then and now millions? The decisions are not always easy but often necessary. But my view is that full maturity means that we acknowledge that sometimes good ends are accomplished by less-than-pure means and, in reverse, that bad ends are sometimes preceded by pure and golden intentions.

“It appears, therefore, that Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rock-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples.” (From Hetch Hetchy Valley, 1912)

So it is with losses and gains. What we see as a loss on one day might result in a gain on another day. It isn't that we “lose” innocence as much as we grow and gain a new perspective. It seems to me that we layer on over our childhood innocence and open minds the experiences with and in the world that shape us. We don't so much lose the joyous capacities of youth, as much as we harden our outlooks and add prejudices to opinions. Competing interests will always compete and more so with contracting resources. But perhaps with a perspective that accommodates multiple uses of natural resources along with a mindset that honors nature's grand sanctity, the means to thoughtful ends might be achievable. Is it possible that what now seems to be an expression of “frontier” exploitation might be viewed as restorative or sustainable? The idea of ecology was not known as a set-aside discipline in Muir's time, as it is now. However, Muir often used the word “home” as a metaphor for nature and man's place in it. The root meaning of eco- is house or home. Ecology is the study of nature as a home. It is the home we know as the earth, sailing along in the cosmos, the only true home for all of us.

“The tendency nowadays to wander in wilderness is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” (From The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West, 1901)

I am trying to make the case for opening our minds to the endless possibilities they contain. All of us don't have access to all capabilities, but we do have access to the possibilities that our minds can imagine. I believe one place where we can safely and comfortably imagine them is in the spaces we set aside for meditation. We can open them up and work with the creativity we are gifted in order to support how we think, how we train our attention, and then what we do. If we practice thinking in this way, then we are not as apt to be swayed by what someone else tells us we should think or do. Our minds are as sacred as the places Wendell Berry refers to above. There are no unsacred minds, only sacred minds and desecrated minds. How we think determines what we think. What we think, in turn, helps us decide what we can and should do. If Woodrow Wilson had thought that all places were sacred, then would the dam across the Tuolumne River have been built? On the other hand, if Hetch Hetchy hadn't evolved the way it did, would we now celebrate the likes of John Muir who became a conscience for the future development and exploitation of the great earth? There is no doubt that our childhood innocence plays into this drama as well as greater recognition of the needs of our fellow human beings. How we strike the balance is, in part, dependent on how we see and describe the world and what metaphors we use in how we think. How do you think?

DAG HAMMARSKJOLD AND AN ORIGAMI LIFE

A book is a lively metaphor for a life. If how to think is important, then linking metaphors with our experiences can be fruitful. Not only do metaphors organize our thinking in a different way, but the metaphors themselves are pathways into greater meanings and deeper explorations. They elicit inquiry and engage our curiosity in creative ways. How often do we say that we are starting a “new chapter” in our lives? Or that we have “turned the page” on a more troublesome part of our life? Are our lives necessarily “open books”? Can you always “tell a book by its cover”? Books themselves are, of course, constructed of multiple pages creased and bound into a spine. In the printing business a signature is a mark at the bottom of each page to denote its sequence in the book and, as well, it refers to a multiple of four folded sheets of paper. And a signature is how we identify ourselves by writing a name by hand. So, there are different ways to use the book as a metaphor. It doesn't take much of a leap to think of those folded sheets of paper as the medium for origami, or the Japanese art of paper folding. When one folds a sheet of paper in half, then one has created a di-ploma and it is the multiples of diplomas that constitute a book, a book of life. Books and their parts are interesting metaphors for describing the life of Dag Hammarskjold.

Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961) was a Swedish economist born into a noble family. His father was a Prime Minister of Sweden and his family was well respected in his native land. From an early age after his formal education in philosophy and economics, Dag (I refer to him by his first name not to do disservice but to avoid typing his challenging last name many times) served in various capacities in Swedish governmental posts. He was involved in coordinating government plans to alleviate economic problems after WWII in accord with the Marshall Plan's guidelines to revive the economies of Europe. He was a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1951. His adult life, by all measures, was as a public servant in Swedish society. He was what one might call a servant leader.

Servant leadership is not a designation that is much used today to refer to politicians in our polarizing times. The shine of politics has worn off and we are left with an impression that politics is a world of tawdry compromise, individual aspirations, money influence, and even deception. There no longer seems to be a gradual progression from the hard work of governing, of serving the common good, to what is called statesmanship. In our times in the United States and around the world, there is a contraction of empathy for the plight of the less fortunate and a closing of minds as well as borders. Individual preferences seem to take precedence over what might benefit greater numbers of citizens and there is a scramble most days for a position of power and influence among competing interests at the higher levels of government. It is hard to imagine that many nations could revitalize the mission of the United Nations. It is hard to imagine that any politician today would say that his involvement in government was an answer to a “calling.” The ideals of international cooperation and individual statesmanship seem far from reality.

Dag's later career as a diplomat was shaped by such a “call” in April of 1953, when in the early hours of the morning he was informed, by a telephone call, that the UN Security Council, after much maneuvering, had selected him to be the second Secretary-General. His response to the call was not without some personal agonizing and consultation with his father and the Swedish cabinet. I don't think anyone understood at the time how difficult a decision it was for him. It wasn't until after his death that his diaries were discovered and published. But to become a diplomat was to be identified by one's credentials recorded on a sheet of folded paper (the di-ploma mentioned above and, thus, the origin of the term diplomat). Dag's term as Secretary-General dignified and honored the office of an international diplomat. He was a very visible presence in the media, as were the complex maneuverings and tangled issues that defined the work of the United Nations in those times. Much of his work as Secretary-General was devoted to smoothing tensions between Israel and the Arab states, the Suez Crisis and, finally, his final flight to the Belgian Congo to mediate a cease-fire between hostile forces and UN troops when his plane crashed with no survivors, raising the specter of premeditated murder (the evidence still debated to this day), and sparking a succession crisis at the United Nations. He personified what it was to be “called” to a position of influence upon which international stability in times of crisis depended during his term. But such a position was not a guarantee of statesmanship. Statesmanship was (and is) a unique blend of pragmatism, idealism, and artful sensibility. Dag had all of that, tormented as he was by a feeling of personal inadequacy in his job (and those feelings only revealed, again, in his personal diaries).

Perhaps Dag might have agreed with what Albert Camus said in a lecture:

“One may long, as I do, for a gentler flame, a respite, a pause for musing. But perhaps there is no other peace for the artist than what he finds in the heat of combat. 'Every wall is a door,' Emerson correctly said. Let us not look for the door, and the way out, anywhere but in the wall against which we are living. Instead, let us seek the respite where it is—in the very thick of battle. For in my opinion, and this is where I shall close, it is there. Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation, others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever-threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundations of his own sufferings and joys, builds for them all.”

Robert K. Greenleaf in his book Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (1977/1991) examines and explores what it is to be at once a servant and a leader. He includes consideration of the contradictions any leader faces and the art of coalescing order out of chaos. It includes acknowledging individual preferences (and national identities) as well as the vital necessity of communal cooperation.

“But the leader needs more than inspiration. A leader ventures to say: 'I will go; come with me!' A leader initiates, provides the ideas and the structure, and takes the risk of failure along with the chance of success.”

“By clearly stating and restating the goal the leader gives certainty and purpose to others who may have difficulty in achieving it for themselves.”

“Is there any other way, in the turbulent world of affairs (including the typical home), for one to maintain serenity in the face of uncertainty? One follows the steps of the creative process which require that one stay with conscious analysis as far as it will carry one, and then withdraw, release the analytical pressure, if only for a moment, in full confidence that a resolving insight will come. The concern with the past and future is gradually attenuated as this span of concern goes forward or backward from the instant moment. The ability to do this is the essential structural dynamic of leadership.”

“Loss, every loss one's mind can conceive of, creates a vacuum into which will come (if allowed) something new and fresh and beautiful, something unforeseen—and the greatest of these is love. The source of this attitude toward loss and being lost is faith: faith in the validity of one's own inward experience; faith in the wisdom of the great events of one's history, events in which one's potential for nobility has been tested and refined; faith in doubt, in inquiry, and in the rebirth of wisdom; faith in the possibility of achieving a measure of sainthood on this earth from which flow concerns and responsibility and a sense of the rightness in all things. By these means mortals are raised above the possibility of hurt. They will suffer, but they will not be hurt because each loss grants them the opportunity to be greater than before. Loss, by itself, is not tragic. What is tragic is the failure to grasp the opportunity which loss presents.”

Dag's life was not an open book—until after his death. His diploma identified only his credentials, qualifications, and accomplishments for serving as the leader of the United Nations. It did not reflect his inner life and consciousness. At this point, it is perhaps helpful to think of how it is we shape our lives—and how we are shaped. The metaphor of the book, the di-ploma, the folded sheet of paper upon which are recorded the events of a life bring to mind the art of origami, as suggested at the outset of this little meditation, and as a contribution to the understanding we have of how to think about our lives. Origami is a technique as well as an art. It involves sequential folding, symmetries, complementarities, and constraints in shaping the final form, be it the elegant crane or some mathematically ordered creation. The medium of paper contains within it a certain fragility as well as the tough ability to hold memory and to maintain its shape. Dag's public persona as a servant leader was visible on the open sheets of his diploma and the final shape of his career, but the folded sheets of his diaries revealed a much more burdened and deeply faithful persona.

By all accounts, Dag Hammarskjold was a closeted homosexual at a time when someone of high public visibility could have been ruined by the revelation of gayness. He was a person of deep spiritual faith and the tension between that faith and his sense of his gay nature is palpable in his diaries, published in 1964 as Markings.

“So, once again, you chose for yourself—and opened the door to chaos. The chaos you become whenever God's hand does not rest upon your head.

He who has once been under God's hand, has lost his innocence: only he feels the full explosive force of destruction which is released by a moment's surrender to temptation.

But when his attention is directed beyond and above, how strong he is, with the strength of God who is within him because he is in God. Strong and free, because his self no longer exists.”

“Even in the most intense activity, this feeling of unreality—in you who have never come 'close' to another. The old fairy tale: the one who has been made invisible or transformed into a beast can only regain his human shape through somebody else's love.”

“It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands.”

We do not shout out our preferences for life, but are patient in waiting for the call to the Way, according to Dag. So it was for him as his public life of service, the way he saw his life unfolding, slipping over the pages of his private life. I can only imagine how different his life might have been in our times when he might have felt more comfortable letting the sheets of his gay private life unfold in a more open and accepting way. I think every person's life is an origami project/process. It is a matter of taking the blank sheets of folded paper in our books and writing on them our identifying credentials then, turning another page, revealing the surprises of our inner lives. Or, taking that same sheet of folded paper and continuing to fold and crease and fold again until, within the constraints so unique to each of us, make of the shape a work of art.

It was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who said of young people:

“Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can—every one—do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.”

As if it were an origami crane signifying peace, folded just so. Dag Hammarskjold was nothing if not a man of peace, even though inner and outer lives were at an uncomfortable peace. Perhaps this is the finest lesson his life has for us and that is that it is possible to live lives of an uncomfortable peace and possible, too, to live a life of service and uncomfortable peace within the constraints of society. Even if we are at war with the folds and shaping of our inner lives, we can use the fragile medium of this pounded pulp to create our own versions of something recognizable as art. How do we think of our lives and life in general? Is it a book, a folded sheet of paper, a diploma of identifying accomplishments, a creation with structure and memory, a sequencing with unpredictable shape? Do we think of it as a book with surprising secrets on every page, each page opening onto the next? Is our book of life anything like Dag Hammarskjold's diary with its own inner life hidden away? But doesn't a book want to be read? Doesn't it want us to be known as we truly are? For Dag, his diary was, in his own words, “the only true profile.” And isn't that true for all of us? If the lives of others are origami puzzles and we are patient to learn about them, should we not be as patient with our own lives? How do you think about your own life? Is there a folding that creates a work of art?

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN--BEYOND THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE

I don't know if Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) ever attempted a crossword puzzle but I do think that his life and writings dealt with puzzles in much the same way we try to solve them. Crossword puzzles are traditionally laid out in a grid of horizontal and vertical rows and solving the puzzle is a matter of following the clues. In some puzzles there is a good bit of wordplay where the clues are puzzles in themselves and anagrams, homophones, and embedded words are often employed. When I was thinking about Chardin's life and works I envisioned part of his life lived on the horizontal and part lived on the vertical. Chardin was a Jesuit priest whose career as a paleontologist kept him on the ground, excavating and exploring, and eventually contributing to the discovery of Peking Man (1934), one of our ancestors in the Australopithecus line (believed to be about 750,000 years old). There were many puzzles for him to solve as he worked away at various sites in Asia, dusting and digging. His philosophical musings, most especially in his The Phenomenon of Man (1955), were the vertical component of his puzzle-solving. The vertical in his life combined his background in paleontology and his priestly life within the Catholic tradition. The Church was threatened in some way by his innovative ideas and didn't allow any of his written works to be published in his lifetime. He also was criticized by the scientific community for not being rigorous enough in his paleontological work (he was at one point involved in the hoax of the Piltdown Man) and so he worked away, not really fitting into any rigidly constructed community. It is this outlier aspect to his life that draws me to his story to this day, having been exposed to his writings when I was in high school. I think, in retrospect, that I was attracted to him because of how he thought.

How we think is far more important than what we think at any given moment. We can learn so much about our cognitive powers as human beings if we focus more on how to think. Once we have committed to the work of thinking (and it does take energy and work), then we can more clearly determine what to think and to discern the value of what others want us to think. With Chardin, I was struck by how he thought about both the horizontal and the vertical. Neuroscientists believe that one of our first cognitive experiences in life is to perceive how each of us occupies space. We build on how it is that we are standing here in this place and move to that place over there. We know about the boundaries of glasses that hold water, about our references to our parents as we are held and contained by them. Space/time becomes a single concept for us and we never really think about it much, if at all. But the embeddedness of space/time affects how we think about the world. For Chardin, there was the duality of external life in the world (his paleontology) and the inner life, the sense of some ephemeral presence or place that didn't have the clearly defined borders of materiality.

The horizontal aspect of life brings to mind the progress of history and how we measure the occurrence of events in the flow of time. We go back and forth in our mind, visiting memories stored in our mental banks. We contemplate the past and look to the future, as if they were solid entities. Chardin believed that human existence was more than milestones in history but was, in fact, an evolutionary process about which there was an element of impermanence. The slow incremental changes of evolution are an ongoing process about which there are no fixed or predictable effects. Even though his field work identified punctuations in the history of human evolution, nothing about them at the moment of their appearance was predictable. And what they led to in the next iteration was also unpredictable, as was the next step into the future of a species. Along the horizontal line of evolution there were many subtle alterations in the physical appearance and capabilities of what was to become the human species we are accustomed to know today.

If one can think of evolution as a journey along a horizontal line, then one can envision all of humanity in all of history traveling individual paths, step by step. Once we enter the period of our history in which individuals begin to assert themselves as singular entities and no longer just part of an evolving crowd, then we take on distinct identities, we become aware of the effects our egos have on who we think we are and what we do. Our lives continue to be linear and we assume they will remain so as we navigate space/time. Human activities are then movements toward something; we are working towards something we think of as progress. Each of us has a particular history, a history of memories, experiences and achievements. We feel we are on a horizontal path that we picture on a line from birth to death. Within our history we have all the individuals that have contributed to our appearance on earth. We have a lineage of ancestors who have lived along the same horizontal line we are presently treading.

Chardin had a very broad perspective of space/time that included not only the horizontal lines of the crossword puzzle, but also the vertical lines. The vertical lines were connected to the horizontal ones in an evolutionary continuum. This is how he thought about the human existential experience. And we, with our developed sense of our own space/time, also appreciate the differences between our horizontal concept of life and its vertical component. Think for a moment how we refer to aspirations as desires for “high” achievements, how we grow “up,” how we look “up” to our elders, how we sometimes look up when we pray, how we grow from a baby on all fours to the vertical position (and what that means for our ability to accomplish what we do, how we run and climb “up”), how we imagine a world beyond the horizontal one we inhabit (this thought is especially contemporary as we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 flight to the moon and what this has meant for further interplanetary exploration--”up” in space beyond earth's atmosphere), and how we think of a transcendent presence some refer to as God (and the references to the devil “down under,” still on the vertical). It was this last reference to God that Chardin incorporated into his thinking about evolution. Just as there is a horizontal element to our evolutionary past, there is also a vertical extension to it. He felt humans were evolving physically in a paleontological context, culturally in an anthropological sense, but also evolving in an upward spiritual context as well.

Chardin envisioned the processes of life, horizontal and vertical, as complex systems of interdependent forces that had implications for the earth and its environs as well as for man's consciousness, leading ultimately to a place of supreme consciousness he called the Omega Point. All of these events fall on a continuous line of development where oscillations between the horizontal consciousness and the vertical occur all the time. We are inside ourselves courting our egos, then we are back in the world engaged with others on the horizontal paths. Cognitive neuroscientists are now able to delineate specific areas of the brain where those oscillations are believed to occur. These areas correspond to how we are able to focus our attention in meditation, for instance. The circuits involved in concentrative attention are intentional and voluntary and focused on singular items, objects, and ideas and are believed to be spread symmetrically in the brain itself. Other defined circuits get us “out of ourselves” and are focused on “the other.” They are reflexive, automatic, and unconscious (open on all sides and often associated with upward gazing). These occur primarily in the right brain, the hemisphere often described as more receptive and less analytical and ordering like the left brain functions. Of course, circuits overlap and more sophisticated technology will reveal more of their interdependence as time goes along and our knowledge of the brain evolves. But if the horizontal is an egocentric path, then the vertical is allocentric or other-directed. It is perhaps possible to see that the priest in Chardin envisioned both the horizontal and the vertical as essential components of human evolution. Thinking in this way offers us the opportunity to see self and other as interdependent and parts of a greater unity, no matter one's religious, scientific, or spiritual affiliation or persuasion.

What is also significant about Chardin's work is how it relates to our present circumstances. I believe that all the notables of history that have presented different ways of thinking make available to us methodologies that impact how we see our own world. If one believes, as Chardin did, that we are in a process of continual evolution and that humans are not the end-point of that process (and not the versions we now see around us, but actually seeing ourselves as a species with a history that extends back farther than 750,000 years ago), then are we not humbled by how far we have come? Are we not awed by the technological achievements that have brought us such marvels as computers and spaceflight?

If one thinks that human consciousness and the human brain have co-evolved with our physical bodies, then it seems possible that our spiritual beings are also a part of that process, an ongoing process as is all of evolution. If one does not believe in the process of evolution, then how one thinks will affect what one thinks of enveloping life. Chardin offers us his version of how to think about human life and how to explain what he has observed about its development over time. How do we think about a whole life with horizontal and vertical components, with inner and external aspects, with physical (soma—tangible, linear) and spiritual (psyche—intangible, non-linear) elements? What do we notice and how does that help us think about the rich experience of existence? Are humans all about ego or is there some accommodation for “the other”? Are we locked into Buber's I/It or is there also an I/Thou part of who we are and how we see the world? These questions have no fixed answers but are only meant to generate deeper thought about the crossword puzzle that is each of our lives. There are the ups and downs and also the linear clues offered to us. There are the dualities that challenge us to see our lives as components of a whole piece.

Chardin somehow needed to describe his vision of the world, how to think about the world, by using newly minted words, another way to describe how he thought and another feature of crossword puzzles. His wedding of the horizontal and the vertical he called “convergence,” a balance of trends to oppose fragmentation of soma and psyche and to support differentiation in both spheres. Noosphere was the sphere of mind. Noogenesis was the gradual evolution of mind or mental properties. Cosmogenesis is the process by which the original proto-humans (paleontology again) became more truly human as we know humans today. Complexification referred to the genesis of increasingly elaborate life systems (and foretelling of the discipline of complex adaptive systems that now extends from ecosystems to artificial intelligence). It is no wonder that these innovative words reflected Chardin's admiration for the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of his favorite writers and a poet whose own word combinations could be described as “complexifications.”

If how one thinks is important, and I think it is vital to our ability to discern the truths of our existence, then it is worth the hard work and the expenditure of energy to apply broad methods of thought to the spheres and realms of human experience. No one method is necessarily more fruitful than another, but developing a broad perspective that includes as many vectors and streams of inquiry as possible is the only way we will avoid the pitfalls of opinions, fixed ideologies, and the resultant prejudices that now lead us down the path of fragmentation. Chardin offers just such a methodology for examining our lives with an upward gaze from the horizontal to the vertical, to a point of ultimate clarity. Who wouldn't want to try to solve this existential crossword puzzle? Who wouldn't want to explore the capacities of the human psyche and soma? Are we up to the challenge?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL—THE HERO'S ROAD MAP

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, August 12, 1904:

“We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appears to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy friend. Let us not forget the ancient myths at the outset of humanity's journey, the myths about dragons that at the last moment transform into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help.”

It is hard to imagine that someone born today or any children younger than 10 years old now alive would enjoy a life free of trauma, suffering, and emotional paroxysms. Because they are human beings, they will have their share of causes and conditions that may lead to seasonal affective disorder, being “out of sorts,” melancholia, disappointment, the “blues,” despondency, or outright depression. It is part of the human condition and often part of an individual's constitutional make-up. With some people, depression is a seed within them that lies dormant until watered by some situation of stress, large or small, and it begins to blossom. It is of such a colossal magnitude in its full-blown state that it is able to overwhelm what we think of as a normal cognitive existence. I believe it was just this mild stirring of the demon's presence that I experienced when I was young. Perhaps it was the overpowering of it by the distractions of schoolwork all the way through medical school that kept my personal demon at bay. It wasn't until I experienced a separation anxiety from my professional identity that it found the conditions ripe for germination. One of the best treatments of the full specter of depression is a book by Andrew Solomon titled The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (2001). When one is gripped by the talons of the demon, this is how Solomon describes the immersion:

“Depression is a condition that is almost unimaginable to anyone who has not known it. A sequence of metaphors—vines, trees, cliffs, etc.--is the only way to talk about the experience. It's not an easy diagnosis because it depends on metaphors, and the metaphors one patient chooses are different from those selected by another patient.”

I agree with him about how difficult it is to communicate one's own sinking into depression. And to find the words that hold the full power of it in order to describe it to someone else is not possible. Because of that personal deficit, I will turn to some quotations from Solomon's book to give the reader some flavor of what depression is like from the inside where the demon has full access to all corners of a person's life. Solomon is articulate in communicating what is so difficult to describe. These descriptions are all intended to paint a picture into which Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), a scholar of myth, added brush strokes that link depression and its environs with archetypal myths.

“Perhaps depression can best be described as emotional pain that forces itself on us against our will, and then breaks free of its externals. Depression is not just a lot of pain; but too much pain can compost itself into depression. … Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you appalled.”

“Major depression is a birth and a death: it is both the new presence of something and the total disappearance of something.”

“Maybe what is present usurps what becomes absent, and maybe the absence of obfuscatory things reveals what is present. Either way, you are less than yourself and in the clutches of something alien. … Rebuilding of the self in and after depression requires love, insight, work, and, most of all, time.”

“There is no essential self that lies pure as a vein of gold under the chaos of experience and chemistry. Anything can be changed, and we must understand the human organism as a sequence of selves that succumb to or choose one another.”

“We are each the sum of certain choices and circumstances; the self exists in the narrow space where the world and our choices come together.”

“I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul.”

“While life is not only about pain, the experience of pain, which is particular in its intensity, is one of the surest signs of the life force.”

“But we must start doing small things now to lower the level of socio-emotional pollution. We must look for faith (in anything: God or the self or other people or politics or beauty or just about anything) and structure.”

“There is a basic emotional spectrum from which we cannot and should not escape, and I believe that depression is in that spectrum, located near not only grief but also love. Indeed I believe that all the strong emotions stand together, and that every one of them is contingent on what we commonly think of as its opposite. I have for the moment managed to contain the disablement that depression causes, but the depression itself lives forever in the cipher of my brain. It is part of me. To wage war on depression is to fight against oneself, and it is important to know that in advance of the battles.”

“Grief is profoundly important to the human condition. I believe that its most important function is in the formation of attachment. If we did not suffer enough loss to fear it, we could not love intensely. One's wish not to injure those whom one loves—indeed, to help them—also serves the preservation of the species. Love keeps us alive when we recognize the difficulties of the world.”

“It is arguably the case that depressed people have a more accurate view of the world around them than do nondepressed people. Those who perceive themselves to be not much liked are probably closer to the mark than those who believe that they enjoy universal love. A depressive may have better judgment than a healthy person.”

“To put an end to grief would be to license monstrous behavior: if we never regretted the consequences of our actions, we would soon destroy one another and the world. Depression is a misfiring of the brain, and if your cortisol is out of control you should get it back in order. But don't get carried away. To give up the essential conflict between what we feel like doing and what we do, to end the dark moods that reflect that conflict and its difficulties—this is to give up what it is to be human, of what is good in being human.”

“People who have been through a depression and are stabilized often have a heightened awareness of the joyfulness of everyday existence. They have a capacity for a kind of ready ecstasy and for an intense appreciation of all that is good in their life.”

“Depression at its worst is the most horrifying loneliness, and from it I learned the value of intimacy.”

“The unexamined life is unavailable to the depressed. That is, perhaps, the greatest revelation I have had: not that depression is compelling but that the people who suffer from it may become compelling because of it. I hope that this basic fact will offer sustenance to those who suffer and will inspire patience and love in those who witness that suffering.”

“So lies the world before us, and with just such steps we tread a solitary way, survivors as we must be of an impoverishing, invaluable knowledge. We go forward with courage and with too much wisdom but determined to find what is beautiful. … That moment of return from the realm of sad belief is always miraculous and can be stupefyingly beautiful. It is nearly worth the voyage out into despair. None of us would have chosen depression out of heaven's grab bag of qualities, but having been given it, those of us who have survived stand to find something in it. It is who we are.”

The multiple quotations from Solomon touch on many aspects of depression that bring to mind what Joseph Campbell describes as “the hero's journey.” And I believe that it is in myth and metaphor that we can begin to think differently about deep grief and the resultant intense depression. Solomon describes what depression looks like and feels like but he doesn't really explore what it can become. He touches on the idea of depression as a seed that is part of one's bones and blood and how the seed can germinate and flourish. He eschews the language of war when it comes to accommodating what is part of one's own constitution, thus throwing one's experience of adapting to depression into the arena of the victor and the vanquished, a less than helpful approach to the persistent presence of depression's seed.

But what if there is another way to think about depression that would alter what we think about it?

Campbell became a popular spokesperson for myth-making in the 1960s and 1970s as a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College but it wasn't until just before his death that a series of interviews with Bill Moyers and a subsequent book of the same name, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, (1988), elevated him to the status of a sage on the topic of myth. The aspect of his scholarship that fascinates me the most is the segment on “The Hero's Adventure.” I believe it holds some very interesting ideas not only on the universal myth of the hero, but also on implications it has for explaining depression.

It may be that Andrew Solomon was able to survive his three bouts of major depression in a state that allowed him to gain some deeper understanding of the pathology and the experience. But it is important to point out that all people who suffer major depression do not survive it. It is equally important to point out that metaphors and myth interpretations are not often adequate treatment for depression and that a variety of treatment modalities must be incorporated into its treatment. My ideas about myth and metaphor relate to depression in a different way. They are offered here as a different way to think about the condition and, perhaps, can be thought of as priming thoughts that create the conditions for more conventional therapies. Perhaps how we think about depression will alter what we think will be of most benefit.

What is the hero's adventure? I like to think of this as the hero's journey rather than an adventure, as the term adventure brings to mind an unusual experience marked by excitement and suspense, albeit one of risk and hazard. In most cases, though, we adventure in this world hoping we will be surprised by what we find and that we will return to tell others about our experience. But linking the hero's experience in this case to depression underscores the distinct possibility that the person journeying might not survive, just as some depressives do not survive their journey (it really isn't an adventure, is it?). Not all those journeying into the “dark night of the soul” return to tell about what they have seen and experienced.

So, let us look at what Solomon says about depression, the demon, and see how one might think differently about the journey of the hero. Perhaps we would not think of ourselves as a hero (and here I use the single reference that really includes both men and women) in our own lives and I think that is especially true of someone deeply immersed in depression. For most of us a hero is a triumphant figure, someone who has slain a dragon, for instance. There are certainly individuals who fit the description of a hero, but most people who survive depression are not recognized for their survival. But I would like to suggest that each of us and all of us in all walks of life are heroes in our own lives. If this were not so, then our most precious identities would not propel us forward in our life journeys. Ego is a necessity for survival and if we do not see ourselves as heroes in life's journey, then who are we? We come to the very important questions about our lives: Who am I? What am I here for? and What then shall I do?

In most versions of the hero's myth described by Campbell, the individual who makes the journey is selected or is chosen for it. Depression as a journey of heroic proportions chooses its subject. The appearance of depression is not a choice but the subject can choose how to respond to the open road it offers. The prospect of maturity despite depression is often associated with a coming of age ritual in many cultures and so it has the ring of a maturation process. For most who journey there are acts of separation from the ordinary world, experiencing a supreme ideal, a state of identity fragmentation, and a reemergence into the common world in a newly integrated state. Survival is proof of the struggle and that one has overcome those forces that would submerge and perhaps obliterate identity. Transformation is the only way to experience the vagaries of the personal identity scouring process. For me, this simple explanation of the basic steps of the hero's journey parallel closely how Solomon describes is experience with depression. It is also how I have come to understand and to think about my own experiences with depression.

Solomon sees depression as having at its core a relationship with grief. Grief is the resultant emotion from loss of attachment and we often associate that with the loss of someone whom we have loved (and even the love we have for our own selves). It is a tribute to the bonding of relationships that their loss results in such a state of dark loss and loneliness. If we did not love them deeply, then would we grieve so extensively and so long? In my own paradigm of depression, it was my attachment to my identity as a professional person and a caregiver in the lives of my family. When I retired and when my children left home for college, I felt acutely the loss of the bonds that had helped define who I was in my own eyes. The seeds of depression in my store consciousness which had lain dormant for years (or only developed into small plants each season of darkness) blossomed and a form of death resulted in a long period of grief. I did not see my journey through the darkness as a hero's journey at the time, but I think that is what it was. And I think that is how we might think of the small melancholias and large depressions that are a part of the lives of many people. There was separation from the outer world. There was a supreme ordeal, as my depression had as one of its dragons the specter of suicide and the nearness with which I felt its hot breath. And there was an eventual reintegration of identity that, strangely enough, didn't resemble anything I had imagined and didn't come as a fully formed entity. What my new birth resembled was more a process of maturation and an ongoing journey of growth. In some ways, I emerged with a more fragmented idea of who I was but it was bolstered by the conviction that there were more possibilities for reconstructing the pieces. I had developed more trust in myself and my abilities and capacities. I was new to my old self, but still an ego in search of itself.

There is some scientific evidence (fMRI studies) to indicate that the continuum of grief/depression is processed in the right brain where we are our more creative selves (as contrasted with the left brain functions of analysis and computation, for instance). When we associate artistic genius with “madness” (or depression), perhaps we are bringing together several components of brain function that manifest as some unraveling of normal processes. In my own experiences with depression, I got to the point where I thought that if anything bad were to happen to me, what I could do for my children would be to document my own story, the story of my life. At least, they would have a more rounded picture of me as their father. So, I began to write my memoirs and to bring together some of the memories that animated those stories. It was a hunt-and-peck process, a process of going back in time and then coming forward to more contemporary events. It was this oscillation that brought order to the project. As I looked back on it, it occurred to me that I had gained a clearer picture of myself and my identity and I had reconnected with those parts of my character and personality that I needed in order to find out who I really was. When Solomon says that we must look for faith and structure within depression, I believe that is what I had done with my personal narrative. I had found some way to order the shards of my fragmented self and had decided that what I could see of my life was worth continuing. I also believe that what Campbell describes as the hero's journey is also a way to order one's experience. Humans are known for their need to find patterns and, in doing so, ordering events and thoughts. As one thinks of brain function, perhaps this pattern-finding, this ordering, is left brain processing overdriving the right brain stall in grief/depression. Engaging executive functions may be a path to emerge from the darkness. It is also possible that the archetypal, universal, ancient traditions of the hero's journey connect us with the experiences of millions of people who have suffered as we have and have endured. This connection helps to soften the loneliness that accompanies grief and depression, a loneliness that gnaws away at one's sense of being in relationships with those who contribute to our identity.

I believe that if I had had Joseph Campbell as someone to accompany me on my own journey, I might have attenuated the depth of the journey or perhaps short-circuited it in some way. Given my personality and inheritance, he would not have prevented the journey. Perhaps this little meditation on the hero's journey and depression might be helpful to someone who feels depression and its threats and give them the idea that they are a hero in an ancient journey of testing that has at its end at least a catharsis and the rewards of survival. The link to ancient lineages of heroes makes one feel less alone and isolated. The rewards of survival are what Solomon has described as having a “capacity for a kind of ready ecstasy,” and a “heightened awareness of the joyfulness of everyday life.” So it was for me in the paradoxical realization that contemplation of death and dying brought me back into a world and a life rich with possibilities, including the continued bonds of attachment. But so it goes in cycles: attachments, loss, griefs and depressions and “dark nights of the soul,” wrestling with dragons, and emerging with a new configuration of identity. In any case, it is not an easy journey and it is usually one fraught with risk and uncertainty. Someone outside the ring of darkness of depression may only offer a road map of general distances and milestones, but that is often enough of an assurance of survival to be a lifeline and a path to recovery and a new version of life. May all who suffer small and large traumas and griefs find the road maps that they can trust to take them from depression to a new dimension of self. To be joyful about life is to be triumphant, isn't it? Every person is a hero.