Hero?sm for Our Times

Everyday I look for fictional examples for achieving happier outcomes. What the great storytellers teach us how to lighten up when faced with social change, alienation, and conflict. To recognize the archetypes "The Lover", "The Jester" and the "Magician" in others and yourself. The Lover who has the desire to experience people, activities and places you love. The Magician who has the desire to experience flow. The Jester whose core desire is to live fully in the moment - to enjoy.

Best-selling fiction,theater, and film often employ plot lines that introduce us to archetypal patterns that address problems we and other people are facing. For example, many people worldwide today suffer from isolation, loneliness, and alienation, and society is changing so quickly that many have difficulty thriving within cultural contexts they feel unprepared for or even resist. So it is no surprise that groups feud with one another.

Perhaps that is why people still flock to performances of Shakespeare’s comedies. He too lived in a time of rapid change (as so many times are). His comedies were humorous, even slapstick at times, but also dealt with serious disorder and discord to achieve a happy ending. Beyond that, they provided a Lover archetype pattern for moving from dissension to authentic, right new order, where the people meant for each other marry, family and social feuds are resolved, and community is restored.

In these plays, the major characters have to leave the confines of their society’s norms and rules to goto the woods or get washed up onto an island so that they can throw off habitual ways of thinking. There, some wear disguises, but all have been playing assigned cultural roles, as we do today if we substitute our image or even our brand identity for our true selves. When a wise character reveals the truth with transformational effect, disguises are thrown off and traditional roles abandoned so that the happy ending can be achieved for all.