The word, hero, in Greek means, “to protect and to serve“. We often find these words on the side of police cars. Thus we think of law enforcement.
And yet, from the etymological perspective rooted in Greek, what is to be protected?
What or who needs and desires safety of survival?
What is ultimately at stake with any story? Life; the protagonist’s survival.
The survival at stake or being risked, as with all humans, exists on at least two levels. While humankind does not exist on bread or food alone, we all need to eat.
As a psychotherapist I also know that the ego forever feels threatened. The adage, “I think, therefore I am,” may have held true in the mind of Descartes, but just as humans do not live by food alone, we are so much more than our ego, and what it deems us to think.
Greeting the challenges that beset us in the mundane reality of life and living requires that we keep our bodies fit and healthy, but that we also dig deep into our hearts and souls, and clarify the purpose of our life and living.
And so, most stories begin with upheaval, change, and challenge, the problems we encounter on our routine day’s journey, and that also raise chaos thus upsetting, and possibly destroying all order as we have known it.
The heroine or hero’s journey then becomes a quest to reestablish order and civility, both on an external level, and within, such that the ego no longer feels threatened, and has more ideally come to see that it does not rule.
What creates order in your life?
How do you define civility?