The above image is a screenshot of my latest (and final, I think) conceptualisation or overview of INTROSPECT. It’s been through many, many iterations, which I may someday get around to piecing together. But for the time being, my focus is on finishing the book, and to do that I think it would help to also use my auxiliary efforts (wordvomits, YouTube videos, etc) to talk about the book.
So let’s do an overview. INTROSPECT follows the traditional hero’s journey structure. It’s an old, familiar structure that works. Why reinvent the wheel of samsara? (This thought led me to some interesting places that will probably not be making it into this draft of the book, particularly about the solar plexus… anyway)
So. Yes. The hero’s journey, the monomyth, popularised by Joseph Campbell. It’s a cycle that starts from the place of innocence and ignorance, home. And then you’re cast out of that sanitized bubble reality, and you discover that the world is much bigger, scarier, wilder than you had initially thought. And you’re lost, anxious, overwhelmed. But you can’t quite go back home the way you came, that path is now closed off to you. So the only way is forward. But it’s a cycle. You’ll eventually find your way back home through another route. It’s a perilous path, fraught with dangerous challenges.
There are many classic tropes in the typical hero’s journey. You’re supposed to receive aid from a wise mentor figure. For me I tend to think not of a specific individual, but of books and music – though my ex-boss did play a very pivotal role for me along the way. There’s this idea of a “belly of the whale”, the “dark night of the soul”, a point of total despair and annihilation through which the hero must pass. And there’s also this sense that, out in the harsh desert, or deep in the unforgiving jungle, out in the open sea – in the labyrinth, what the hero must truly confront is himself. His own fears, anxieties. His heart. And here all meaning collapses, all hope seems to be lost. But then there is renewal. There is a light, however small. In the midst of winter, an invincible summer. And from this – let there be light – all is reanimated anew. And it is in this that the hero finds his courage, his inner strength, the voice within, and it bursts forth from his heart. And this is the nectar of the gods that he brings with him back home to his village.
Alright? That’s the basic structure. Now let’s talk details. In the story of the Theseus and the Minotaur, our hero Theseus needs a thread (gifted to him by Ariadne) to navigate the labyrinth without getting lost. (There’s some interesting complication here, where the classical labyrinth technically only has one path, so there’s no way to ~actually~ get lost, but we are looking for symbolic truths here, not practical-literal ones). My reading is, the thread is about continuity. The thread is storytelling, the thread is ancestors. The thread is a reminder that you are not alone, that even when you are physically isolated and adrift, you are not spiritually so. All of humanity’s heroes and adventurers are with you on your voyage, you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, the very language that you use to make sense of reality, and of your challenges.
There’s a funny thing here that’s a bit disjoint where I find myself saying, “the hero is a project manager”, or “the hero must learn project management”. In a way, Theseus had it “easy” because all he had to do was go into the labyrinth, confront the Minotaur (which I choose to read here as a metaphor for the ugly, angry, tyrannical parts of ourselves), and there’s one showdown and that’s it. That’s the convenient elegance of stories. Everyday life is quite a bit more tedious than that. We have to face our Minotaurs repeatedly, and it gets easier in some ways, but in some ways it never does. (Stories do capture some of this essence, when you see that even “wise elder” type characters who also struggle, often with their cynicism, which comes from years of unpleasant and unhappy experience, lots of disappointments. It isn’t a one-and-done thing.)
The project management part is also often kind of rushed through in a “training montage” type scene. The reality of heroic project management is that it’s quite tedious and boring, to put into a story!
If I split the book into a “3 act structure”…
the first act is about the emotional experience of leaving “home”, and then it’s about picking up the skills you will need in order to survive.
The second act is about confronting challenges and problems, facing the fog of life – physical, psychological, social, cultural, spiritual. It’s about facing fears. And at this stage of writing I guess now I’m thinking, what are fears, really? How well do I understand them? [1]
The third act – this begins with a “boss fight” – THE major conflict, which the hero confronting the self, the inner authoritarian-tyrant, and then dealing with the consequences, resolving everything, moving forward.
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Alright, time to wrap this overview up. What do I want to say that I haven’t said already? Hero’s journey, leaving home, facing struggle, overcoming it, returning home. Developing the skills you need to handle this journey. Trying to capture the emotional quality of the experiences along the way. Illuminating the fog! There’s a fog. All kinds of fog. I talk about this in the introduction. The heart is the beacon. Spielberg quote.
I’m not sure this overview was a good one, but I think it’s helpful to get it out of my system. I might do another one sometime.
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[1] I asked my friends on Twitter for their thoughts and I’m now reading the 12 steps of AA. It’s not the first time I’m glancing at the 12 steps, though I think previously I was averse to the centrality of religion. (Step 1: admit powerlessness, 2, believe in a greater power, 3, decide to turn over will and lives to God…) But now, reading it again, I realize I’ve since expanded my concept of what God can be. It doesn’t need to be the God of the Abrahamic faiths, or of any particular faith. When I think of God now, I think of my self-authored relationship with the world as I know it, and beyond. To me, God is (amongst other things, maybe) the heart and flame and light of human consciousness. God is present in every act of devotion, in literature, in music. And so now I have a way of approaching works written with God in mind, a way of relating to that. I do talk about it in the introduction of my book, but not very much beyond that.
Revisiting this overview that I’m writing right now, I find myself thinking, well, tough kitties, I’m not going to be able to read and master the entire concept of fear in time to integrate it artfully into the book. I’ll just admit that it’s a work-in-progress.