“For when the heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion beyond the reckoning of the senses. Sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass. ”
Joseph Campbell
John read the following passage slowly and carefully, although it had been a guiding force in his life, and the basis of two books he had written on his own, he wanted to take it in and absorb it this time. “When the heart insists on its destiny.” John had always thought this was about fear, but now for the first time he thought about it in terms of love. Campbell and Jung had both talked about love as a kind of joining of forces that helped a person find the missing parts of themselves. Was this the heart’s “destiny?”
John thought about this for most of the day, and for the first time really began to contemplate an idea that had been crystallizing in his head for some time. If he found romantic love, would it then exponentially increase his love of the larger world? Were the two not just interrelated, but absolutely intertwined? John had rejected that idea for most of his life, believing that the fairy tale myths of modern Hollywood were short-sighted and even dangerous. Still, they were myths that were based on stories from the beginning of time, and John vowed to keep an open heart and mind about the subject.
He spent most of the day reading Campbell, and while he did made a number of notes about things he thought were relevant to his own search. John thought a lot about his own unorganized emotions, and how this lack of organization impacted his life for better or for worse. He knew he gave often of his love and of his heart, but also that he usually closed up the shop when an individual person got too close to his emotional core. Why was this? If Campbell was right, he should feel a desire to complete the missing piece of himself and become whole. Why did he keep swatting this piece away?
He thought a lot about how the idea of being an empath may also play into this, but was also very careful not to use that as some kind of rationalization for avoiding intimacy. Still, the question persisted; was there something unusual about him that didn’t fit with a basic human desire since the beginning of time? He knew that was a little dramatic, but still wondered if he perhaps felt things so deeply that it was difficult for him to maintain personal relationships.
This conjured up all kinds of questions for John about what the actual science of this may be, and if there was an explanation as to how his brain actually functioned. He had seen brain scans done on sociopathic people before, and had observed how their brains did not seem to register any empathy whatsoever when watching other people in pain. All of the science behind these kinds of tests were controversial, and in part based on the premise that people possessed something called “mirror neurons” which explained on a biological level how one human feels pain when he or she watches another one suffer. It had also been suggested that autistic people lack these mirror neurons, which inhibits their ability to read and transmit emotional cues.
According to one theory, autism and empathy exist on opposite sides of a spectrum between complete lack of feeling and a sense of being utterly overwhelmed with emotions. Men tended to fall more to the autistic side, while women more to the empathic side, but really most people fell into the average range of this equation.. There were however extremes, and John had truly begun to contemplate if he was one of these extreme cases.
As he was thinking about these things, John’s mind drifted back to another time and place. He was on his grandparent’s farm and he was 8 years old. He had wandered off into the Apple orchards and gotten hopelessly lost, when inexplicably, and seemingly out of nowhere, he happened upon a family of Mexican people eating the unripened Apples off of the trees. It had broken his 8-year old heart. He remembered doubling over in pain, and actually feeling how hungry they were to have to sneak into the Apple fields and eat this fruit that wasn’t even fit for healthy consumption.
The family had become alarmed, and had actually carried him back to his family farm, despite their fears of being exposed as illegal immigrants. He remembered his grandparents arguing as he lay in bed recovering, and how upset his grandfather had been that his wife had fed these people before sending them on their way. His grandpa had referred to them as “savages” at the time, and John had no idea what in the world that meant. He remembered being troubled though, and also feeling highly unsettled and disturbed. He hoped this memory would recede into the distance and let him get some sleep.
But sometimes memories come back. John had dreamt of his grandparent’s farm at least once a week for a decade, and wondered often about why this memory had become so deeply etched in his subconscious mind. There seemed to be a powerful lesson here about empathy, and despite putting forth an amazing effort into understanding this recurring dream, John had never really put all of the pieces together. Sometimes they come back. This phrase now popped into his head. What did that mean? What came back? Memories? Dreams? Lovers? He didn’t know, but all of a sudden he became very interested in the question.
He had spent nearly an entire day reading and thinking about these things, and finally found some piece from these words;
“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, This is what I need. It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”
John was learning.