“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are
only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps
everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that
wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
I remember the night: January 10, 2015. I had purchased
season tickets to a local Texas Music Series, and January 10 was the first
concert of the series. I had to admit I wasn’t very familiar with the monthly line-up,
but I’d been to a handful of other concerts in the series, so I knew this would
be a fun concert with good music at the very least. The season tickets had been
a Christmas gift for my boyfriend and I. The concerts seemed to be one thing we
could enjoy together and not have to talk too much… yeah, things were that
good. Even at Christmas, the gift had fallen flat, just like most gifts I had
given him. The “oh, wow, thanks,” with a forced smile usually meant I had
missed the moving target yet again. No matter how hard listened and remembered,
nothing was quite good enough. Wasted guitar lessons, Turkish copper salt
mills, hardware store gift cards. Nothing was quite practical or thoughtful
enough.
I went to the January concert not quite knowing what to
expect. I had heard the musician sing two songs, “Snake Farm” and “Screw You
(We’re From Texas)” so I was expecting a lot of off-color humor but not a lot
of thinking. That was ok with me. It was time to start a new semester at
school, and I was glad to be back into the swing of things so I didn’t have to
be at home, enduring stony silences or glares. I was depending on Ray Wylie
Hubbard to give me some entertainment that would just numb my mind, and to
enjoy the complimentary beer in the lobby during the breaks. At first, Hubbard
filled the bill perfectly. Stories about his early haunts in Texas dives and
80’s – 90’s hot night clubs made me laugh, but they were about what I expected:
hard living, booze drinking, looking at women, etc. I guess I felt better
knowing I wasn’t the only one wasting my life. I was turning 45; half of my
life was over, and what had I accomplished? I had two broken marriages, I was a
single mom to a son with autism, and I had finally opened up to a committed
relationship again only to be met with the same old song and dance. Nothing I
did was good enough, and I was too demanding. Deep inside, I knew that wasn’t
right, but my entire life had been lived that way. I didn’t know how to argue
to myself that what I heard WASN’T right.
I didn’t know how to face that dragon, Joseph Campbell would
say. Yes, I had been teaching archetypes in my English classroom for three or
four years by that time. I liked the idea that the hero’s journey symbolically
stood in for the different phases of my real life. I’d always liked stories,
and found it easy to put myself into the place of the protagonist. When I
thought of what the hero in a story faced, it gave me a little more motivation
on those bad days, those days where I didn’t feel like getting out of bed, or
those days where I’d “slept” 10 hours and awakened exhausted… I knew I was in a
dark spot during that concert. I knew I was facing a dragon, but I was unarmed
and unprepared. I’d had no mentor, so I couldn’t imagine how I’d crossed the threshold
and gotten this far in my real life journey. Truthfully, I’d had a mentor, but
I couldn’t quite figure out how the wisdom she’d given me translated into
facing this dragon.
Hubbard said something funny, and it reminded me of
something that I had just experienced in class the day before, so I leaned over
to tell my partner about it.
“Shhhhh!” he responded, “We’re hear to listen to the music,
not chat.”
That was about the five hundredth time he’d done that same
thing to me that week. He had stopped me before I even got four words into my
sentence. I was interrupting whatever he was interested in, and he couldn’t be
bothered. No matter I only had a couple of sentences to say, and that would
have been it. But, it wasn’t the specific thought hanging there between us that
bothered me so much. What had bothered me, and continued to upset me, was the
continued habit of his dismissing everything I tried to say. Literally, not
figuratively, I had tried to have some conversations with him that week, and I
hadn’t been able to state more than once sentence in five days. However, I had
sat there and listened to many monologues about finding a job, working on
whatever handyman project someone had him doing, and the other things he wished
to talk about that week.
I just sat there for a moment, my mouth open stupidly,
dumbstruck. I blinked a few times then snapped my mouth closed. I turned to
face front and watch the performance while I held my beer to my mouth and began
to sip. The cold beverage relieved a little bit of the heat rising behind my
eyes. I managed to only let a small tear on my left cheek escape. It didn’t
matter anyway – he couldn’t see it, nor would he have cared if he could have
seen it. I don’t remember the song that Hubbard played. I remembered my litany
I repeated, “How much more silence can I be expected to endure? Why isn’t it ok
if I want to say something, ANYTHING? How have I ended up here?” I followed
that with a reflection on turning 45, looking back at half my life, wasted, and
here I was with someone I thought could have been a life partner, but who now
barely seemed to tolerate me. Well, I thought, I’m too old now to have any more
children, and people have their bad days or weeks, so I guess I’ll just “suck
it up” and live with it. I couldn’t possibly interest anyone new anymore. I was
suddenly struck by a thought – I still have my life to live, and it’s going to
look just…like…this…
It’s amazing how many thoughts a person can have in the span
of one or two minutes. All of that happened internally before the song was even
through. Before I know it, I could barely control my eyes watering, and my nose
sniffling. The song came to an end, and the performer immediately started
talking about a concert tour from a time when he’d been about 40 years old. Oh,
good, I said to myself, his talking will give me a moment to recover my
composure. I pictured my heart inside me. Sometimes it looked like those
Valentine’s hearts people draw to represent love, and sometimes it looked like
a real heart in my head. I pictured it beating, slowly, red and pulsing with
life, then I imagined a layer of ice building up over it, encasing my heart
more thickly with every layer until my eyes stopped watering and my breathing
turned almost normal. The pounding in my ears started to go away, and that’s
when I heard it.
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are
only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps
everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless
that wants our love.”
What? Did I just hear this brash, outspoken entertainer
quote something about dragons and princesses? I peered at Hubbard down on the
stage. Dragons and princesses, those are something I know about. Suddenly, I
was whisked away by my love of Jungian archetypes and monomyths. I knew dragons
represented something within us that needed to be defeated. Every person has to
save him or herself, not one else can. At the same time, we also have the
princess within us, that part of us that wants someone else to do the work. I
had never run into anyone willing to do the work for me. I knew it was my
responsibility. But, this Texas musician, who had been so rauckus, was he
suddenly quoting Rilke in the middle of a concert? Whoa… Hubbard went on to
talk about how this Rilke had impacted him at the age of 40. He saw that it was
never too late to begin what you wanted to do, and so Hubbard had changed his
life. It wasn’t too late for me, was it?
Maybe this wasn’t the end of all the possibilities in my life. I was used to
thinking of my “dragon” as something dark or something outside of my own life.
I had been looking for “darkness” within myself. Well, hell, there was plenty
of darkness there. I had let someone else drag me so far down into that darkness,
and I chose to remain there. It was so dark, I couldn’t see what weapons I had
available; I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face in the darkness. All I
could do was rage against “circumstances” and continue to harden my heart with
anger and fear.
I thought a little bit longer while Hubbard played another
song, a song related to the quote, but I’m not sure I needed to hear it at that
point. I had already heard his message. A new, very short mentorship overlaid
what I had already learned. His quote was just what I needed to “arm” myself
and find my “dragon.” What if the dragons are princesses who are just waiting
for us to show them something beautiful and courageous? I looked at the man
sitting to my left. I had been looking at him as a dragon for so long. As silly
as it sounds, I suddenly saw a princess who desperately wanted my love. I know
that, somehow, but that princess couldn’t STILL be waiting for me to show love
and courage. What had my offer of reuniting, agreeing to pay bills, and helping
him get a degree that would help him find a job been, if not love? What had
agreeing to counseling, facing all the rages, and still trying to remain open
with him been, if not courage? I had admittedly to him, and willingly on my own
part, made myself vulnerable to the very thing I feared the most – being taken
advantage of and hurt. It had surely happened to, every time I tried to stand
up for myself, or tried to put myself into the relationship too. That princess
didn’t WANT to be rescued. That princess was HAPPY being the dragon and
challenging folks to show love and courage, then burn that love and courage
with his flames until they became just…like…him…
And suddenly, I had my weapons to vanquish my own dragon and
rescue my own princess. That love and courage I had been throwing toward
someone else, those were my weapons against my own darkness. They were what I
needed to stay compassionate and caring about others. I was throwing away my
weapons to someone who didn’t need them, want them, or appreciate them. I
thought of my heart encased in its layers of ice inside myself, and then I
pictured a flaming sword shattering that ice. I saw myself holding that burning
steel without harm, and I could see myself wearing armor, not shiny armor, but
beat up, blackened armor, and I saw all the hurtful arrows and darts of
contempt begin to bounce off my well-worn shields… My eyes dried up. I felt
good. I felt very good! I had just needed that one last piece of wisdom from a
person who never knew he stood in as a mentor for me that night. I’m sure he
never intended to, anyway!
I stayed after the concert to meet the musician, not caring
if it made my boyfriend mad. It did. I finally didn’t care anymore. This was something
I wanted to do, and I was going to do it. I met Hubbard, and we chatted a
little bit about his mom, who had taught English literature. We talked briefly
about archetypes and Rilke, and the evening drew to a close. I rode home that
night with renewed vigor. I was practically shaking with eagerness to be rid of
my darkness, and to make my way on the hero’s journey “home.” I knew the time
had come, just as quickly as that. It wasn’t long after that I requested my partner
move out and find his another place to live. I was relieved, and I was free.
Do we know how often we say things that might mentor other
people? I doubt it. Just as they say ten seconds of thoughtless chatter can
destroy someone for ten years, I also believe that ten seconds of insightful
wisdom, shared freely and without expectation, can transform someone for the
better forever. I take it as my responsibility now to share what I can, what I
know to be true for me, and to tell stories that night heal the world. I may or
may not indirectly mentor someone through my efforts. All I know is, one night,
when I least expected it, a perfect stranger spoke straight to my soul and set
me back on the hero’s path. Now, because of that gift, I seek to do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment