Crisis: A Time When Heroes Are Born

“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know.”
-Joseph Campbell

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VUCA is an acronym that characterizes our world today (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous).

Today, old systems are eroding. Institutions that have provided us with a sense of orientation and guidance around how to live our lives are collapsing before our very eyes. We are living in a kind of “in-between time”, between a familiar world that we have known for so long and a potential world that has yet to unveil itself. This holds true for both our collective and individual experiences.

It’s only natural that this uncertainty be anxiety-provoking. As human beings we are hardwired to be wary of things that lack certainty. It’s a defence mechanism. Nevertheless, we ARE human beings. If we allow ourselves to only be driven by our mechanisms, we then submit to living a mechanical life, and that’s not the life we are meant to lead.

This begs the question, how are we to cope?

How can we navigate through times marked by uncertainty and crisis?

Crisis, like suffering, is a fact of life. While we can’t escape it entirely, we can live through it consciously and be transformed through the insight and awakening that it can provide. As the Buddha said, “suffering is a vehicle of consciousness”. And like with any vehicle, we hope to be competent drivers, rather than asleep at the wheel.

Crisis is a time of opportunity, as well as a time of danger. The danger lies in the threat it poses to what is familiar and comforting. The opportunity lies in the possibility for something new and better.

Crisis is an opportunity for greater maturity. Maturity comes with seeing ourselves more honestly and accepting our own individual responsibility and the role we play — in our day to day lives, our relationships, our family, our workplace, our community, and the wider world. We each play a role in a larger story.

Crisis calls us to be tested, to question ourselves, to transform ourselves, to awaken and bring forth the best of ourselves. And only through an effort of free will can that call be answered. This transformation, this rebirth, requires a kind of death. We are called to let go of a part of us that no longer serves us. Yet, this psychological death gives way for something new and better to be born.

We will all face several different crises — both individual and collective — throughout the course of our lives. Let’s not ask ourselves how to avoid them, because they will come. Let’s ask a different question…

What will your legacy be?

Does it really matter if your name is remembered when you are gone? Or does it matter more how many hearts you touched while you were alive. How sincerely you loved. The inner battles you fought. How you persevered through the difficulties and the fear. How you were transformed for the better. How your authentic transformation inspired others, showing them the possibility to strive after their own inner hero.

Think of the heroes who serve as examples — examples of compassion, of courage, of understanding, of patience, of humility, of justice, and of love. Think of those people in your life who have inspired you to be a better person. Their very presence was a teaching. These are the heroes of everyday life. Of course, their lives weren’t exempt of suffering and crises. No doubt they grew into a larger life through those experiences, extracting the essential meaning they contained, being transformed for the better.

We all have this potential within us no matter our station in life. And when crisis comes to us, in the face of the fear and the challenge, it’s ultimately calling us to awaken the hero within.

Where to start? Start where you are.

To situate yourself you could ask self-reflective questions, like:

• Where am I stuck in my life?
• What kind of situations do I keep repeating?
• In which ways am I out of integrity?
• What role do I play in the suffering that I experience? What within me is at the root it?
• Am I living a truly authentic life?
• In which ways am I being driven by the external?
• What unconscious drives are running the show?

The first step is to objectively recognize where you stand.

Next, we must accept responsibility (rather than justify, or blame, or play the victim).

Finally, we must improve and correct the root of the problem.

In simple terms, this is the hero’s journey.

This is our journey, and we can traverse it every day of our lives…if we choose to.