“At the heart of the nature of all living things,” mused Alfred North Whitehead in his Adventures of Ideas, “there are always the dream of youth and the harvest of tragedy.” (294) The underworld ordeal is the vehicle of this “harvest.”
The myths that lure us away from home to seek our journey are usually those things we only heard about from others’ stories or dreams-come-true. Whitehead suggests that “the deepest definition of Youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.” True. It is the universal story of humankind to start out thinking we want one thing and to end up realizing we want something entirely different. As this maturing process unfolds, our youthful dreams are usually dashed.
The dream is important. It ignites and fuels imagination and passion, essential energy for the journey far from home. “Our souls are formed in the idleness of youth,” some wise man said. Dreams are borne in this idle play, choices too. We tell our youth, “Go to what you want and wait. A door will open.” It’s the rest of the story our youth aren’t told.
The door is an opening, not a destination. Getting that first job, buying that first home – these are but openings into richer choices. What we really want is not so easy to know in our youth. It takes time and the gaining of things we thought we wanted, until we get them — a high-paying, high-stress career, a large home with a large mortgage – before we can redefine our true hunger.
It takes us by surprise when we discover that, what we wanted after all is, as Saint Exubery says, “invisible to the human eye.” That’s the adventure that is never finished, not fixed in time, that’s always changing, always moving, just ahead of us. This stokes our passion. Then, imagination teases us on, to discover what we really want at a deep, core level. It takes time, and lots of opening and closing of doors.
Carl Jung said we are pushed from within toward wholeness yet free to choose not to be whole. If our dreams are too narrow, we will settle for living off other people’s dreams without ever finding what makes our own heart sing. We can’t stand in two worlds. Either we’re on the path, our path, or we’re walking the path of someone else’s choosing. If we don’t stand tall where we choose to stand, it won’t reveal to us who we really are and to what our wholeness calls us.
What do we tell our youth, then, of their starter dreams? Just that – they are starter dreams. We now have starter marriages, starter homes, so why not starter dreams? Do whatever you undertake like it’s all the passion you need. Join your energy to whatever pleasures you, whatever energizes you, and that energy will spill over into your present venture. Connect with your present venture with the same passion and energy you would a sexual partner.
Represent yourself and what you really have to offer the world, because, if you’re unsure, you won’t offer yourself in your full richness. Be flexible, don’t get stuck in one choice, one venture, but be willing to go with the flow of change. If you’re doing what you do best, someone will notice. Be open to new opportunities to express what is in you, even when it doesn’t seem likely this is how you would choose it on your own.
Some doors may be closed to you. Go through the door that is open and make it possible to express your gift there. Make it work for you until something does work for you. Do whatever you do in your way, so you can come to your fullness, wherever your path leads. Don’t be too hooked on one dream. The dream changes as opportunity knocks.
Hardship is out there. What you do with it is important. Let your song be, “I’m gonna find a way to be!” Remember, the Grail journey is a search that never gets there. It’s not finding the Grail but how you experience your life along the way that is the real goal, the real prize. To feel and to fully experience is the Grail, not anything you can put in your hand.
And when “tragedy” comes, as Whitehead says it must? Don’t run from it, as instinct will suggest. Don’t lose that energy you’ve shepherded so well. If your relationship or your career crumbles before your eyes, shift the dream, shift the energy, if all else fails. Get that passion back into your life and look for the next right step.
There’s an old Krishna story about a demon chasing Krishna, with Krishna racing to escape. It isn’t until Krishna looks back to see if he can discover anything interesting in the demon, find any passion in the chase, that new energy emerges. Krishna discovers the imagination to teach the demon how to dance with him. And then they dance, until the demon becomes a Beautiful One.
Deeper “tragedy” — losses that break the heart — demand more archetypal energy. It’s life itself that wants to dance with us, and the ticket to dance defies our understanding. Then, Dear Youth, step back into all those life-death-life stories you carry in your soul and sit until the tearing clears. Fall into the unconscious and wait for energy to stir your passion once again.
From ancient times, we’ve known that sacrifice is bedrock to the human experience. The underworld is the breaking of the bread of us, so that new energy can emerge from the broken pieces. Unbroken bread is unconsecrated bread. To be consecrated – to be blessed by life – the bread must be broken. It is in the breaking that we are transformed into something other, something sacred – transcendent in fact – a eucharist to be shared in every human story.
The underworld, the ordeal, is the threshing floor of this harvesting of youth. The “harvest of tragedy,” for Whitehead, is that all this suffering brings Youth to what he could not otherwise attain, “the Harmony of Harmonies.” It is only in the sacrifice that the fullness is realized. It is only in the loss of youthful dreams that the real dream awakes the dreamer and offers life.