What's Your GiG?

by Kelleen Griffin

In any true hero journey, there comes *that* moment.

You know the one.

Hollywood makes a great effort to glorify it. In truth, it is a very private moment; no one is like any other. And no one can describe it to another. But, there is one tell-tale sign of a survivor: they look at you in a way that dissolves all pretenses. They know there is no longer any time for half measures and they are patient and impatient all at the same time. They are hungry, but they can’t eat until you are ready too. So they watch and wait, hungry and eager.

Hollywood is correct on one facet of the hero journey: there is always, always, a death. One way of being, gives way to another. One mental construct is replaced by a new and completely opposing construct. Even in music: “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

We know this – all of us. And, regardless, what we wanted, what we fervently thought we couldn’t live without, happens, it actually happens. We are free and imprisoned all at the same time and it starts with a phone call, an email, an IM – and our life changes forever.

I am familiar with this. Countless clients tell me about the exact moment they got “the news”. The anonymous phone call announcing a husband’s infidelity, the “I’d like to speak to you today at 5pm on Friday” – or the never, ever expected, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to tell you this…”

All of it. The mind blowing change, the emotional upheaval, the loss – we fervently want things to be different and then they are, but not like we thought….

This article is about the moment – and nothing more. No one writes about the moment. Is it because it’s fleeting, we don’t remember it, we can’t seem to make sense of the exact chronology?

And better yet, is this the reason that no matter the compassionate observers, the well-wishing bystanders, the moment itself is gone, not to be ever revisited, not to be ever the same, not to be ever consoled?

So I write for the moment …on the moment. So fast, so vast. How can we ever prepare? How can we ever know…the choices, the feelings, the paths turned from…the ones walked?

There’s a reason they call it the Hero’s Journey.