Billy Coffey

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The Hero’s Journey (aka If I would have spoken)

May 25, 2020 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

Our daughter would have celebrated her high school graduation last week.

Instead, what formal ceremonies to mark the occasion will be limited to a small service next week with family at the high school, and this past Sunday, when she donned her cap and gown to walk across the church parking lot during an outdoor service. There were horn honks instead of applause.

She is fine with all of this. Our little girl has been through quite a lot in her short life, resulting in a heart that is ever bent toward the hurts and needs of others. A pandemic? Doesn’t phase her.

But even as our daughter doesn’t considered herself cheated in any way by what’s taken place in the past two months, I can’t say the same for her father. Last year, the high school principal asked if I would be available to speak at their 2020 graduation. I told him the honor would be mine. Whether things would have worked out that way is something I’ll never know, but I like to think they would. After all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to speak on one of their child’s biggest days?

Since that day has come and gone in a way that’s wholly different than anyone imagined, I thought I’d post something here. Whether these would have been the words I gave to my daughter and her graduating class, I don’t know. Likely it would have been something completely different. Regardless, this is what I’m thinking about on this warm but cloudy May morning with the dog snoozing beside me and the creek singing past my upstairs window:

I had to wonder why when I was asked to give this speech.

Why me, considering that in my time here, I was little more than a jock with a C average. What could someone like me offer in the way of wisdom to the class of 2020?

I’ll admit that I don’t know that answer. I don’t know much, actually. But I do know what makes a good story, and I think that sort of knowledge is well-suited for the few minutes I have with each of you today. Because whether you believe it or not, whether you accept it or not, right now you are all living out your own story.

And my advice to you is simple: make your story a good one.

But how? I’ll tell you how.

Many novelists, myself included, hold to a theory called the hero’s journey, which was conceived in 1949 by a mythologist and literature professor named Joseph Campbell. The idea is a simple one on the surface: every great myth and every great hero, from Gilgamesh to Moses to Bilbo Baggins, no matter how different they are, follow the same steps along the same path of life.

Campbell named 17 stages of the hero’s journey. For the sake of time and your attention, I’m going to limit those to the high points. I want to give you a guide of sorts to go by, because your lives have changed dramatically over the past few months. In many ways, they’re going to change even more over the next few years. It’s going to be easy to get lost along the way. Easy to start doubting, whether it’s yourself or your place in the world. It’s important to know the dangers waiting for you out there, and the hurts that are coming. Most important of all, you have to know the rewards waiting if you endure.

The hero begins in what Campbell called the Ordinary World. It’s the world you’ve always known, the world of your everyday. You’re in that world right now, but you won’t be for long, because you are about to start your own journey by moving to the next step — the Call to Adventure.

That step for you begins right now. The diploma in your hand is a key to unlock a door moving you deeper into a world filled with as much fear as possibility. There are wonders out there beyond any you realize, and there are also terrors you cannot fathom.

These first two stages, the ordinary world and the call to adventure, are the same for everyone. Hero and coward, victor and vanquished, the remembered and the forgotten, all face these two phases of life. The difference between them begins at the next stage, which is the Refusal of the Call.

Along with the talents you possess and the dreams you have come worries that any of it matters in the end, and doubts that you can ever achieve the goals you’ve set. You think, “I can’t do this. It’ll never work. I’m nothing, and I’ll always be nothing.”

That inward battle between doubt and faith, despair and hope, is one you will fight for the rest of your life. And right here is where the hero’s journey ends for most.

But while the ordinary person allows him or herself to be consumed by doubt and fear, the hero understands that in order to do great things, doubt and fear must be fought with faith and courage.

The ordinary person refuses the call to adventure and remains forever an ordinary person. The hero, however, doesn’t let fear and doubt take hold. That means you have to answer the call to adventure laid out here this afternoon. It means you don’t take this piece of paper home and shove it into a drawer. Look at it. Cherish it. Understand what it means.

Do that, and you’ll enter the next stage, Crossing the Threshold. The hero moves from the ordinary world into a world that’s more beautiful but filled with more danger than anything known before.

You’ll find that world soon enough, when you trade high school for college. You’ll find that world again, when you trade college for adulthood. Like all heroes, what you do once you cross the threshold will determine the course of your life. It will not be

easy going. You’ve discovered that already. You will discover it again. The world has teeth, and those teeth will find you. But without that struggle, life turns meaningless and empty. Without that fight, the hero cannot be made into a hero.

You’ll meet people to help you along the way, the stage called Supernatural Aid, when you’ll find your own Gandalf and your own Obi-Wan. You’ll find friends. Enemies. You’ll find ordeals and trials so difficult that you don’t know how you’re going to come through it whole.

You’re going to want to turn back, give up. You’re going to discover that the greatest enemy you will ever meet is in the one living in your own thoughts, and you’re going to know just how weak you really are.

These, too, are all stages of the hero’s journey. These are the things you must struggle with in order to fulfill your destiny. The things that will nearly break you. The things that will become your own personal dragons.

But that act of becoming, of learning and growing and leading and suffering, leads to the stage called the Reward. The hero is transformed from an ordinary person into the person he or she is meant to become. It’s that degree you want. That job you dream of. It’s the climax, the final and harshest battle, the moment that defines a meaningful life and the worst death possible, the death of dreams, the death that leaves you alive but numb.

If you work hard, if you endure, you’ll find the very treasure that you left your ordinary world to discover.

I’m proof of that.

But then comes one of the most important steps of your hero’s journey: the Road Back. There will come a moment when you must make a choice between your own personal wants and a higher calling. And just like the refusal of the call, some will

choose selfishness and return to their lives as ordinary people. But the hero will always choose the higher calling of placing the good of others above the self.

The last stage is the Return, that day you finally present your changed self to the world. The day you step forward armed with all you’ve learned to bring hope to others. The day when you realize that nothing will ever be the same, when you understand that what is past does not have to define you, and that God put your eyes in front of you so you can see where you’re going, not where you’ve been.

That is the hero’s journey. That is your journey beginning right here. So embrace it. Take it seriously. You understand more than anyone that the world is a mess. The world has always been a mess. There has always been darkness crouching at the door. But in every generation, there have always been lights that shine outward to keep that darkness at bay.

Every one of you today has a decision to make. You can be one of those lights, or you can add to that darkness. Those are the only choices you have.

You can hold this diploma in your hands go back to your lives like nothing’s changed. You can refuse that call and let someone else do the hard work of making the world better. You can be ordinary. That’s fine. The world is filled with good, ordinary people.

Or you can start your own hero’s journey right here, right now. You can understand that you come this way only once. That you have a purpose no one else can fulfill.

There are dragons out there. Slay them. There are monsters in the dark. Stand up to them. There are hurts in the hearts of everyone you meet. Help heal them.

The world needs you. So shine your light. Starting right now.

Thank you.

Filed Under: Adventure, challenge, choice, courage, graduation, heros, Uncategorized

My neighbor and hero

February 20, 2014 by Billy Coffey 9 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-02-19 at 9.28.39 AM
image courtesy of google images.

Time has a way of wiping the memory, compacting chunks of years into months or even days in the mind, glossing over even those recollections we once held as precious. There is much I’ve misplaced about my childhood, but one thing stands out even now: those long days when I sat prostrate in front of the television, my knobby knees tucked under myself, back straight and eyes forward, waiting for Mr. Rogers to come on.

It was much the same with you, I would imagine. Generations of people grew up visiting Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood each day. We grew up with him. Learned with him. No matter who we are or what we’ve become, our childhoods have him in common.

Growing up, he was my hero. I wanted a sweater like his and a sandbox like his, and I pined for a magical train that would run through my house to distant lands. It was time that separated us, no longer made us neighbors. When a boy (or a girl, for that matter) reaches a certain age, Mr. Rogers is no longer cool. Mr. Rogers becomes a nerd. A dork. He’s no longer a friend, he’s the weird old man down the street.

How stupid we all are.

In 1997, after 33 years of teaching us all how to look and listen and act, Fred Rogers was given a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys. It was quite an odd sight, seeing him and his wife among some of the most famous and powerful people in Hollywood. And yet he took the stage to receive the award accompanied by a standing ovation that ended when he stood in front of the microphone. What happened next can only be described as magical. I ask you to take three minutes out of your day to watch:

Video from KarmaTube

How wonderful is that? How beautiful that this humble man (who was an ordained minister to boot) stood upon that glimmering stage in all that pomp and circumstance, holding a statue coveted by so many, and made it all not about him. And more than that, he reminded everyone else that it wasn’t all about them, either. It was instead about the ones who had been there to support them, to love them, to help them. In an age defined by the individual, Fred Rogers taught us in ten seconds that we are all connected to one another.

But there’s more. What struck me most watching that speech was that such a powerful truth had been given with such meekness and humility. How hard do you think it would be to convince a crowd of Hollywood actors and actresses to pause for a moment and think about someone other than themselves? To forget their fancy dress and their high status? And yet Mr. Rogers did just that, and merely by looking at his watch.

“I’ll watch the time.”

That’s all it took. There is a small rumble in the crowd, a few chuckles, and then utter silence. Because Mr. Rogers wasn’t kidding. He was serious, he wanted them to do this. And when Mr. Rogers asks that you do something, you do it. Not because you’re scared or intimidated, but because a part of you knows that he loves you.

Because he’s your neighbor.

As a result, Fred Rogers got exactly what he wanted that night. Not applause, not a statue. He convinced all of those people that they are indeed special, not because of what they’ve become, but because of who they loved and who loved them.

And that is why Mr. Rogers was my hero growing up. And now that I’m grown, why he’s my hero still.

Filed Under: encouragement, heros, love, success Tagged With: Mr. Rogers

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