Photo by David Jusko on Unsplash
“While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.”
-- Virginia Woolf
The Blessing & Curse of Obscurity
In the monomyth revealed by Joseph Campbell as "The Hero's Journey," Joseph Campbell describes an individual who has accepted the call to adventure, and comes to the point of entering a dark forest. Campbell describes the beginning of that journey:
“You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else's path.
You are not on your own path.If you follow someone else's way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.”
Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash
You are entering the place of obscurity. A place of deep self-awareness, that has been described by some as entering "the dark forest of the psyche". This is a place so deep, so dark, that even physical obscurity, your unknownness in a world of 7.8 billion people is not as deeply hidden (as all of today's varied data mining tools can tell you). You are alone with your psyche, and much of yourself is unknown. To avoid the darkness, you may attempt to choose a path forged by others. You may heed to call to be the next (place your hero's name here), but if you attempt to follow a path other than your own, you will not live a grand adventure--yours will not be a story to tell. It will simply be a cheap imitation of another, and you will never reach your full and unique potential.
This is the blessing and curse of obscurity. Right now, you may possess all the fame in the world. You may be Twitter famous, an Influencer, a Tech Giant, a Productivity Guru, or you may be simply an ordinary, forgettable person--a statistic to the world's leaders. Not anyone of significance beyond close friends and family. In any of these cases, if you have followed another's path, you are a cheap imitation, you have feared the darkness, refused to enter the forest, and you do not know yourself or your potential. No matter how your life looks, you are utterly alone in your obscurity. This is a curse, and most of the human race lives under its darkness.
“If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.” ― Emily Brontë
However, while it is best to enter the dark forest, it takes bravery to know yourself. This will not be an easy battle, and if you are victorious, you need to know that you will come away from the battle deeply wounded, transformed, humbled, but with a new sense of destiny that will allow you to influence and lead those around you--however famous you later become, your greatest conquest will be that you know yourself, and you are prepared to fight the battles ahead. This is the richness that comes through the hero's journey. This is the blessing and the curse. You will be forever wounded, forever changed, but because of this, you will be free to love your fellow humans as they are, free to see the heroic journey they must take, free to support them as they seek to discover their own path in the dark forest.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Enlightenment
Enlightenment will come, but it never ends with the first glimmer of revelation in the dark forest. Now you can see a little more clearly, but the hero's journey continues. There will always be new revelation, renewal, new dangers to face, new journeys into the psyche and new growth hidden in the dark forest. Until that final breath, you will never "know" all that you are capable of knowing. And even then, whether you simply lie in the ground forgotten, or live on eternally in some other form, you will never have achieved oneness with the mystery of knowledge, the grasp of truth, the fullness of human experience.
And it won't matter. If you embark on the Hero's Journey, you will have lived life! Lived adventure is really the experience of life itself, and that adventure can be lived out in the most seemingly mundane circumstances. It will build in the generations to come, as you pass down the legacy of the journey, and you share the wisdom that has been gained. As your children, friends, and those you influence build on the bits of enlightened revelation you have shared. The mysteries will be revealed and it doesn't matter if your name is known. The wisdom will remain. Your potential will continue to grow, your influence continue to spread. Your adventures will continue to echo through the fabric of time, circling back to influence the life of another; calling them to the Hero's Journey, which really is nothing more than the grand story of living a life with purpose and meaning.
Sources
Further Reading
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre
Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus by Rosaria Munson
Time and Narrative, Volume 1 by Paul Ricoeur
If you enjoyed this newsletter and think someone else might too, then please feel free to forward it to them. If you were sent this email by someone else, welcome! If you like what you see, you can subscribe to receive weekly posts.