Unfortunately, those who refuse the call don’t have a life. Either they die, or in trying to lead more mundane lives, they exist as nonentities, what T. S. Eliot called “hollow men.”**
Joseph Campbell
Our human restlessness – our search for meaning, our drive toward extreme adventures, our compulsion to create something of lasting value – these are not separate from longing for genuine connection. Blue moments reveal that our existential quests and our relational hungers spring from the same source.*
AleXander McManus
There are more people
waiting to meet you–
Your adventures
will lead you to them.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote^
about how we are born
with contradictory sets
of instructions:
One is a conservative instinct
for preservation and energy-saving,
The other is expansive,
Embracing risk and exploration.^^
Whilst the former comes easily to us,
The latter demands energy
and may be resisted,
After which it withers, hiding in shadows.
Yet when we respond
to this call, this need, this itch or urge,
There awaits an esprit de corps
With those we meet along the way.
Differing from the communities
we set out from,
Victor Turner preferred to name
these fellow travellers communitas.*^
Just as our hunger to feed our conservative instinct
will include others, so our desire
to feed the expansive will bring us
into deep connection around a common purpose.
Whether at home or abroad,
There is no making of us
without others, our stories being replete
with those who share our days.
*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
^Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity;
^^This is a very simplified version of what Csikszentmihalyi writes;
*^Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process.
THIN|SILENCE 