Owning Your Story as A Path to Enoughness

Is the path leading out or in? 

Story is a really powerful thing. Most of us know it can entertain, create commitment, mend fences, and even spark a movement.  But do many of us know that the simple act of writing our own story can be life-changing?

My only child is currently engaged in the age old right of passage of writing his college entrance essay - three little paragraphs that seemingly hold sway over so much. But as his writing-coach mom, I have been struck by something else about the process.  Regardless of the practical results of his essay, the act of writing and claiming one's story is a profound moment in a person's life.  It is a moment of answering, "Who am I?  What is my value? What do I want?  Am I enough?"

When we write our story, we are thick in the act of meaning-making.  It is as if we broaden the lens  from being the experiencer to also becoming the observer, from character on the screen to also being the audience in the seats of the theater.  As observers, we could interpret our role as central characters in so many ways - as victims,  heroes, teachers or learners. And depending on the lens we choose, our stories look and feel very different.

I have come to believe that a need for meaning-making is something inherent to us all.  We've all been taught the hero story, one which begins with a call to adventure, presents one or more problems to be solved, and a conclusion where either we solve the problems or we gain a new valuable insight about ourselves.

All too often, though,  the standard story line is one of good versus evil, right versus wrong, winners versus losers. But real life is rarely, if ever, that simple or absolute.  Our stories are imperfect, our victories incomplete. Our most satisfying and heartbreaking  moments come because we have put aside that stark "otherness" and dare to connect in what Rumi referred to as "the field" "beyond rightness and wrongness." The alternative to meeting in that field is isolation, stagnation. 

I think we are being challenged in these confusing times to claim our deepest stories amid the loudness and roar of all the fleeting outer stories, and to claim them as empowering, meaningful "enough stories." When was the moment we realized we were enough to make a difference? When did we step out of patterns of powerlessness, blame or shame to feel our precious, one-of-a-kind spirits shining through?

Reading my son's story about himself has been a very moving experience for me. Some of the greatest privileges in my seventeen years as a parent have been our sacred conversations when I've remembered to reflect back to him his precious "enough story" until he could clearly see himself.

Everyone knows from direct experience that the most powerful stories ever told are ones not crafted in this complex and fleeting web of "have to's" "should's," winners and losers,  but those which connect to something much deeper and more universal and enduring   -  the heart. Yet I don't think that young people of any generation have ever been so challenged to be and do so much at a young age.  It is so easy for them to doubt themselves and lose themselves in the complexity of expectation, convention and nuance that is heaped upon them.  If for no other reason, I think it is imperative that we get in touch with our own enough stories so we can help our children to affirm theirs.
 
To claim our enough story is to remember again who we truly are; to remember what we love and why we have come; to affirm that we are and in fact always have been enough to be perfectly who we are. To do this is to claim for ourselves and for the world a greater sense of peace, liberation, self-acceptance and purpose.  In my opinion, nothing could be more powerful - and meaning-full - than that.

How about you?

When was the moment you realized you are enough to make a difference?

When did you step out of old patterns of powerlessness, blame or shame to feel your precious, one-of-a-kind spirit shining through? 

You can find our more about Laurie or her book, Enough!  How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word at www.theenoughmessage.com  

Laurie writes another monthly blog, Wisdom From the Circle, sharing the themes that arise in her women's circle each month. 

Why I No Longer Root for Heroes (and Don't Want My Son to Be One)

The screen flashes with explosions, the music builds to a crescendo and out of the rubble leaps the hero who has managed to save the innocent and conquer evil against all odds. The crowd is applauding with approval and delight.

How many times have we seen this scenario play out in movies, television, video games and books? Why is it we seem to never get enough of this predictable story line?

As a mother of a teenage boy, my fight  to protect the innocent is very different.  My battle has been against the constant intrusion of the hero story into his and our lives. I know, I know, many of you will be shocked by this statement.  But I think I have something important to say.  How do you tell your son that such a hero scenario rarely or never exists in real life - that the reality actually looks much more like this:   the gun wielding hero returns from battle with PTSD, the ex-sports star ends up divorced and addicted to alcohol or sex,  the young man without job prospects and education joins a gang or a Jihadist group because it promises him the opportunity to feel like a hero.  A real life hero may never receive parades, medals or public adulation and is not likely to perceive himself as a hero at all.   Do I dare tell my son the more insidious and more common truth - that the urge to be a hero is so strong for most men that at some time or other it will drive them to do destructive things that harm their own and their family's well-being?

Let me give you some examples. I imagine these may sound familiar to you. This week, I happen to have been in the right time and place to hear the stories of several different couples who have had or are having marital problems - big problems.  The scenario goes something like this:  The marriage started off great.  There were many exciting things to achieve early in the marriage - homes, children, career advancement.   Life made sense and it was easy to feel like a  hero while achieving early benchmarks of adult life, especially because what you did directly provided security and pleasure for those who matter most to you.    But somewhere in the 40's, the basic milestones having been achieved, the marriage settles into a kind of lull.  Gains in status or condition come much more incrementally, not at all, or there are major economic setbacks.

The 2008 US economic crash caused many males of my generation to experience an unexpected drying up of prospects at a time they were supposed to be at the top of their game.  The effects of a slow economic recovery meant many were getting more and more under water each year, and like the quintessential frog in a pot of boiling water, not realizing it until it was too late. Coming to terms with the loss of their "hero-ability" was messy and complicated.  Ashamed and scared, and probably clinging to the hope that there would be a major economic upswing that would take care of their situation (one that has never come), some sort of gratifying reprieve was sought, whether it was an affair, gambling, alcohol or impulse buying on credit.  I see these behaviors now all as manifestations of the insatiable drive to be seen by others as a hero. When it is denied by day to day realities, there is a tendency to create a space in your life where you can at least pretend to be a hero.

I believe that so much of the political and economic unrest in the world today is caused by the gap between the hero fantasy and the reality in which there is very little opportunity to live out the hero story in legitimate ways.    I wonder what all the boys raised on "Call of Duty" video games will do when they confront this gap as young men.  Will they become like the angry young men in Greece and Spain rioting because there are no jobs, the young men in the Middle East lured by extremist groups to the promise of hero status in a "holy" bloody Jihad? Will more young men enlist to be soldiers, to be used as throwaway pawns in philosophical and economic wars? We must look under the hood and see how the hero myth feeds both sides of any armed conflict and prevents us from ever manifesting peace.

What I have found is that the hero always requires an enemy or a victim - someone to fight or someone to save.  So the hero stands alone and apart, playing a role that objectifies himself and everyone else and denies our depths.  In this scenario, the only "good" role, the only one that satisfies the ego, is that of the hero.  Meanwhile, the enemy earns our scorn and the victim our pity.  But we fail to see the price that even the hero pays for taking on his supposedly desirable role.    Clark Kent was a sensitive, intelligent guy, a lover, but he had to literally change into different clothing to be seen and valued.   This is a schism that sadly reflects reality for many men. The only difference is that instead of a cape and leotards, the costume of choice is a lab coat, work boots, business suit or hard hat.  Instead of a gun, the weapon of choice may be a credit card, some antidepressants and a bottle of Viagra.  The hero story as we have told it is the story of a loner, and does not support the inner conditions for partnership, vulnerability, intimacy, understanding, love or community. Humans are social animals.  We can not thrive without these basic pillars of well-being.

Listening to the stories of regular middle age couples, the fallout from the hero myth is everywhere.  Many fine and caring husbands and fathers, when faced with the cold reality that they cannot be an economic hero to their families, shut down, escape into fantasy side lives,  becoming addicted to gambling, alcohol, sex, video games or drugs.  The effects are devastating:  affairs, bankruptcy, shattered trust, financial betrayal, loneliness, divorce.  Invariably, the choices that were initially hidden are found out by the family, and then the real suffering begins.  Home becomes the last place you are considered a hero. It becomes the very place you are reminded of your shame, your failures, your unmet goals.  One man coped by creating a life of the party alter ego at the bars, another became the compassionate go-to confidante to his female work colleagues but found it hard to ever discuss his own feelings with his wife.  One man could not bear silence, and would zone out on TV or radio on all day and all night, another was treated like a king at the casino where all the dealers and cocktail waitresses knew him by name, the chips on the table paid for by a second mortgage on his home.  What all these stories have in common is that they are stories of separation and disassociation: disassociation from our true needs and feelings, separation from the family support system we need so desperately, separation from the truth of our value as unique and precious beings.

I believe the drive to feel like a hero is so deeply programmed (notice I didn't say inherent), that it lures many men into ever more risky and destructive behaviors, never realizing the price they are paying for clinging to the hero myth until it is too late. I have heard of good men who have in moments of quiet desperation cashed out their wives' 401K's and used the money to gamble instead of to pay back taxes on the house.  I have heard of socially prominent men who are nearly bankrupt and constantly hounded by bill collectors but would never dream of giving  up their golf club membership.  I have heard of men who send their kids to private schools, but who cannot afford to keep the heat in their homes above 55 degrees in the winter.  And I have heard of men - far too many of them - who sadly have taken their own lives because the rift between reality and the hero fantasy was just too overwhelmingly huge to endure.  As I struggle to make sense of these counter-intuitive choices, the hardest to accept is the testimony of many suicide survivors that at the moment of taking action to end their lives, they felt utterly worthless. In fact, what I see is that the dynamic that placed them in that corner existed long before each of these good men were born.  It is unfortunately the consequences of the overall Never Enough Paradigm that has been dominant in human culture for the past 5,000 years, the paradigm I explore in my book, Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack.


How many more men need to die and how many families must be destroyed before we look to this common cause - the hero myth itself? When will we link arms as mothers, wives, sisters, aunts, friends and daughters to confront the common enemy which rips the men we love from us and from their own hearts?  Little boys are just as sweet, sensitive, intuitive  and emotionally open as little girls. When will we see how seemingly innocuous entertainment  and social conditioning changes the psychology of boys forever, creating a slew of minefields as they seek to define the true meaning of manhood?

I believe the work begins in our homes by engaging our husbands and sons in heart-centered dialogue. It is hard work, but well worth the effort.   Although our marriage was not one of those in distress, my husband and I recently found a way  to a deeper level of connection after 25 years, and I can see that for us it has everything to do with acknowledging how the hero story has kept us from fully experiencing emotional intimacy.

I have come to understand through him  how pervasive and invasive the hero story is, how it makes men afraid to take emotional risks or to appear weak or uncertain to those they rely on for love. To allow a woman to hear tales from one's underbelly is to allow an intrusion into the exclusive world in which a man is taught to be self-sufficient and to value his autonomy and dignity above all else. The last person a man wants in there is a woman who feels sorry for him.

The self-imposed isolation and depravity of this feels so unnecessary to me.  So I have learned to begin by simply listening to my husband's stories.  Gently, softly, I offer comments that simply say I hear him and I appreciate what he has had to go through to be my hero.  I reinforce everything about his essence that I love - his sense of humor, his way of looking at the world, his values.  My job, I realize, is to remind him he is not a role, but the most important person in my life. I reinforce that I didn't sign up for a hero when I married him, I signed up for a partnership.  I admit how I had bought into the hero myth through the feminine half of the hero fantasy - the story of the princess who is swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor.  I apologized for how easy it was to pretend he was not suffering at times under the burden of this impossibly huge hero role.

As I grow older, I am learning more and more to relate to others with empathy instead of  sympathy, and I think this is a key element to breaking the hold of the hero story.    Empathy says, "I hear you.  I see you. This is your journey, but I am solidly with you."     Sympathy says "I feel sorry for you. I will try to fix or save you."   When the hero receives  sympathy, he feels shame and builds bigger walls to isolate himself because a hero isn't supposed to need to be saved.  I am and have always been my husband's biggest fan, and it was shocking to know that most of the time he did not experience my love as approval, but as  the risk of disapproval.  Old tapes of judgement from childhood, society or from our earlier years of marriage when I was less patient and less mature were still very much running the show in his head. If we are to repair the significant damage done by the hero story, we need to begin with our boys and our men by simply saying, " I hear you now.  I see you now.  I love you unconditionally."

The conspiracy theorist in me sees how cleverly the hero story keeps all of us separate and in a state of self-blame, never-enoughness and disempowerment.   This is quite convenient for those who require a ready crop of heroes to do their bidding for them.  I am convinced that the insidious nature of the hero story affects each and every one of us without exception.  

My work on the Enough Message has taught me that our greatest fulcrum for change always rests at the level of cultural story, in realizing that we have not only the right but the responsibility to choose our cultural story consciously.    The Hero Story has been nothing more than an "attractive" delivery system for the old Never Enough Story.  That bigger Never Enough Story is crumbling, and so, too, will the old hero stories.  We are outgrowing them.  But I think we can make it happen more quickly when we participate in the shift. So I am on a campaign to blow the cover on the hero paradigm, to call its bluff and to encourage the formation of a better story. If we are lucky, another generation will not have to live with its spirit-numbing consequences and will come to know that the true call for humanity is to live according to the wisdom of our hearts.

In my next blog, "The Real Hero Within Us:  The Drive to Pay it Forward and Pay it Back" I will explore the inherent, benevolent drive in all of us to serve the greater good, how this has been distorted and co-opted by the hero story,  and how we can attune to our authentic drive to serve a "higher calling that does no harm."

Laurie McCammon, MS, is the author of Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack.  Her website, www.weareenough.com has free articles, videos, quizzes and more to support those making the shift from Never Enough to Enough.

Find and like us on Facebook at Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack
or on Twitter at TheEnoughMessage
You can email Laurie directly at theenoughmessage@gmail.com

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

The Lego Movie...So Much More than Meets the Eye

What may seem to most moviegoers as an entertaining flick with an unexpected and heart-warming ending is so very much more than meets the eye.  Notwithstanding the father and son dynamic that many would consider the understory, what I saw was a third layer,  a deeper and more universal theme about consciousness, revolution and evolution here on earth.

Through clever use of humor, the beginning of the film, set in Lego City, turns out to be a commentary on how media and advertising controls our habits and behaviors. We learn, for example, that the main character, Emmet, is willing to pay over $30 for a cup of coffee.  The villain, named cleverly, “President Business,” is an amalgam of “the powers that be” that control the world behind the scenes and without the awareness of the pleasantly ignorant public.  That government and business are linked in the name of this one character is probably closer to the truth of the matter than we’d like to admit.  Is there really a separation between these two bastions of power in our world?  Unlikely.    

In one of the most astonishing scenes, we see that in plain site, city blocks are blown up in order to be reconstructed all over again exactly as they were, and all seemingly with no alarm from the public whatsoever. Such scenes cause one to take on a birds-eye view of our own society and the ways that behaviors, buying habits, fashions, entertainment and fads take up much of our conscious lives, robbing us of original thought and more importantly, of the ability to think critically and perceive honestly.  It could be said that the hero’s journey is his journey to regain the use of his creative and original mind, and to trust his intuition.   We, like those in Lego Land, seem oblivious to repetitive meta patterns such as war and the economic system which repeatedly cause the problems they then rush in to solve, all keeping humanity on a hamster wheel of problem, solution, problem, solution.  Meanwhile, we make no progress in really addressing root cause of our most dire and rampant problems – environmental devastation, starvation, violence and the like. Can we see that the powers that be are distracting us from concentrating on these real problems?  

But if the movie were to stop there, it would be quite depressing.  Thankfully, it instead presents a blueprint for getting out of the current malaise and brain drain imposed on the people.  There are some very simple, but essential elements I will break down.  But first, how is it I noticed the story behind the story and why am I so convinced that there is one?  Just a month ago I completed the a draft for a book about the topic of enough. What I saw unfolding on-screen gave me the chills.  It was practically a chapter by chapter demonstration of what I had laid out in the manuscript,  only mine is to be a serious book about the imminent shift of consciousness in our world. Those watching the movie will wonder how it could be about the rise of the feminine as the main character wasn’t a woman at all, but a man.  However, the qualities Emmett  drew upon to complete the hero’s journey were not the usual masculinized ones  of  cleverness, brawn or bravery.  Quite the opposite.  It was instead his humility, his willingness to listen to spiritual or intuitive messages, and his ability to see connections between vastly different things that propel him on his way.  So, not to get hung up on masculine and feminine, hopefully we can agree that this is no ordinary screen hero.

What we realize is that Emmet, if anything, is positive.  When he learns about President Business’s evil plot, he does not go negative, cower or run away.   For a very brief time, he considers the traditional hero’s path, believing the prophecy that he is special because he found the Special Piece.  But quite quickly, he is discouraged from taking the egoic path of the lone wolf, and admits his insecurities to an assembly hall of Master Builders (experts.)  It is this moment which actually propels him to a level of worthiness of a leader, on a path more like that of Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela. His authenticity and humility become  the powerful magnet for bringing together those who have until then operated as independent egos.  He gives an inspiring speech to these experts about what it is they are missing, essentially saying, “If we would bring together your creativity and genius with my ability to work as a team, we’ve got what we need to change the world.“ Only when we acknowledge and appreciate our unique enoughness can we give up the competitive game and trust that together we are stronger and wiser than we are apart.  We essentially find how our piece fits with that of others to create a bigger whole.  Humanity’s evolutionary step is to marry the heart and the brain, so we can remember how to share leadership that benefits the greater good. Before Emmett came along, the Master Builders were hanging out in a cloud land, being creative independently, but missing how relevant they could be as a united and more cohesive force.
  

Much like the main character in the Lego Movie, I was unprepared to stumble upon “the special piece” and had to figure it out after the fact.  For me “the special piece”  was a simple word, ENOUGH.  And the more I examined it, we realized that our society had only examined half of the enough story, the NEVER ENOUGH half.  Never Enough has been the underlying “instruction book”  which keeps recreating the same old problems over and over again for the past 5000 years. Daring to build beyond the instruction book is the daring step Emmet and his allies take.  For humanity, this means moving from the tight adherence to Never Enough thinking and perceiving to explore Enough thinking and perceiving.  Without giving away the ending of the Lego movie, I will at least say that another thing “the special piece” and Enough have in common is that they both invite heartfelt connectedness to replace ego-driven, fear-based rigidity. It is about feminine qualities such as nurturing and acknowledging another’s value.  It is about flexibility and creativity, collaboration and the thrill of transformative discoveries embarked upon as a community. It is what we are seeing blossoming all around us as “the sharing economy.”

I hope as many people as possible see the Lego Movie, and I hope that for every one it plants the seeds of what is truly and realistically possible.  And I hope that for more than just a few, it becomes much more than that, an invitation to become the bringer of the New Story here on earth right now.   

More at www.weareenough.com

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage