YOUR 40 MIN MARK

There’s a reason that we connect with a well-written movie. Story, at its core is the experience of life put into a poetic form of death and rebirth. At the end of the day, your favorite movies and books are all the same, a hero who’s trying to obtain a goal but dies along the way only to resurrect from the ashes. It’s us trying to figure out how to deal with not just the chaos around us, but the chaos within us.

The big difference between life and a movie though is that the hero only deals with their inner demons and tragedies once before they move on and the story ends. Real life often fails to be this poetic and we (the hero of our own stories) deal with our own dragons and tragedies in a far less structured way.

Too often we choose only to deal with our external conflicts without dealing with our inner chaos. Movie’s don’t have this problem, in a story the external journey is a reflection of the inner journey, this is why Rocky is a boxing movie; the whole script is about a guy who’s constantly being beaten down by life, he doesn’t want to win, he just wants to go the distance. Our real life conflicts unfortunately tend to be more seperated than we would like.

We go through our inner conflicts in a much longer and cyclical way, often getting caught having to deal with the same inner struggle over and over again. So how do we deal with it all? Well we might not be able to put our lives into movie structure, but we can take a page out of story’s 4,000 year old playbook and learn how to break our cycles and conquer the chaos.

THE 40 MIN MARK

There’s a moment in every movie where the hero needs training, usually about 40 minutes in. They’re stuck in between a rock and a hard place and it’s sink or swim time. This is when Luke crash lands his X-Wing on the swamp planet Dagobah, making it necessary for him to face himself and his failings in order to learn the force and move on. (It’s also the moment when Anne Hathaway is told she needs to commit to her job and she starts wearing dresses, in The Devil Wears Prada– just in case you’ve never seen a Star War.) The point is that as the hero of your own story, when you’re thrown into a vulnerable, or chaotic season you have a choice: Move forward, or resign to your current fate… something that’s is far easier said than done.

Usually, when you get to the 40 min mark in the movie you’re pretty on board, investing away in the characters while you eat your popcorn, or cuddle up in a blanket. When a 40 min mark happens to you in real life though? Oh in real life it’s the end of the world.

Recently I graduated a two-year course and received a Certificate IV in Christian Missions, which in case you’re not Australian, it’s the equivalent of a Master’s Degree (if you squint. From a distance.. after you’ve had 6 drinks… it’s nothing like a Master’s).

Anyways, it was a course that allowed me to live here with a student visa, so it was pretty important that I stayed on top of my assignments and due dates. Long story short I had accidentally tossed out what I thought were old, graded assignments; in reality, they were old assignments in need of corrections. Later I got an e-mail from my instructors informing me that I was missing a third of my work and was 100% ineligible to graduate unless I got it turned in. I was in trouble.

Now here’s the catch, this wasn’t an out-of-nowhere turn of events, I was often late with my assignments, sacrificing homework instead of learning to manage class while working full time. So just like Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada, I was putting in the hours, but I was uncommitted in a pretty big way and now I was paying the price. I had a few meetings and was fortunately given a second chance and would be able to re-do 15 weeks worth of assignments; it was time to try on some frickin’ dresses.

TRYING ON SOME FRICKIN’ DRESSES

In a way, that whole experience was my 40 minute mark, if my life was a movie you would be watching a montage of me at home with pens, highlighters, and stacks of paper, furiously scribbling down notes and circling random words in a textbook as Chinese takeout boxes pile up around me. In reality, it was just me sitting in silence for a few hours a week after dinner. Thing is though, I graduated and then it was over, life went on.

It was a classic happy ending, the weight of the world was gone and I had a great night with my close friends, took some snazzy pictures with everyone; it was some prime credits material. Then two weeks later I was swamped with a mountain of monotonous work and then my personal life exploded… and, well, like Avril Lavigne once said: So much for my happy ending.

So I was plucked out of one “happy ending” and immediately thrown into a state of discontent and a new 40 min mark. No new quest, theme song, or anything, just whammo; but it’s not like this was the first time that something like this had happened, nor will it be the last. Over the past few years alone I’ve been forced to rethink my life and motives, more than once, we all have (hopefully), that’s life. You learn and you move on. Everyone has to spend time crash landed on Dagobah with a green muppet, but sometimes it takes some time to get out.

We know all of this though, life ebbs and flows at a whim, but what story teaches us is that in order to conquer the Darth Vaders and Meryl Streeps in our life, we can’t just keep going through the motions, we have to conquer ourselves.

THE CAVE

In mythology whenever a hero goes into a cave or a time of seclusion it’s a time where he/she must take a long look in the mirror before they can move on to their final challenge. Star Wars does this literally.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke (who is in the middle of his 40 min mark) has another trial he needs to face in order to continue his training. A place of darkness is calling out to him and he needs to find out what’s going on. He approaches an ominous cave and ignores the advice Yoda gives him: “You’re weapons. You will not need them.”

Descending into the cave, Luke is quickly approached by none other than Darth Vader himself. Instantly reacting, our hero draws his laser sword, ready to fight. There’s not much of one though, as Skywalker quickly lobs off the head of his enemy. The helmeted head rolls down on the ground and the mask explodes revealing the face of Luke Skywalker himself. Now it’s a pretty trippy scene, but ultimately this is the idea of self vs self and it goes back millennia. You can’t conquer your fears by fighting, you conquer by surrendering.

Bring it back to real life. What are the weapons that we bring when we’re forced to face ourselves? It’s actually pretty simple when you think about it, they’re our defenses. The first instinct we have when we’re exposed is to put our guard up, we create the illusion that we’re conquering our fears and inner conflicts by “attacking” them head on, but in reality we’re not dealing with anything, just burying it all deep down, which can lead to some destructive behavior. And unfortunately, it’s a really easy thing to do.

We usually choose not to be open and honest with ourselves. We put up our walls, cling to past hurts, and do all the backward gymnastics we can in order to justify our actions, or rather, inactions. Doing this only spins your wheels and brings you nothing but pain; it will twist you into something that you don’t want to be and it leads to a fate worse than death. Not to be dramatic, but that’s the big lesson from Star Wars and many, many stories: If you set out to fight and kill Darth Vader, you become Darth Vader.

It’s not until the next installment that Luke faces Vader a second time sees that the way towards peace isn’t to run, or attack, but to surrender and endure the pain of changing into someone new. And that’s the hard part we face every day.

But like I said, life doesn’t follow a standard 2hr format. You don’t just leave the cave, we return to it all the time; it’s a daily process and we don’t always get it right. Even in Star Wars Luke sees a vision of his friends suffering and rashly leaves his training early. He “technically” leaves the cave, but he gets into a fight he’s not ready for and gets his ass handed to him. He doesn’t actually move past the inner cave until he chooses not to fight. We can pick up our lives and move to a new city, or country, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve grown. If you haven’t found a way to face yourself in the cave without weapons, then you’re destined to repeat the same cycle.

REBIRTH AND SYNTHESIS

There’s an idea in story structure that after the hero has laid down a sacrifice they obtain their goal and return home changed. It’s the story version of the Pythagorean Theorem: Character^2 +Story^2=Change^2. Essentially this is the message we’ve been trying to tell ourselves for thousands of years. When we actually decide to face ourselves we’re not going to be the same, we’ll be something new. It’s a scary, yet exciting realization.

Facing our failings and vulnerabilities is a choice. Often we choose not to change and this doesn’t always happen knowingly. Life moves on whether or not you do, and often we mistake outward change as inward change. You can choose to take your weapons into the cave and still graduate, get the girl, get a job, move across the world, but you’ll constantly find yourself fighting the same fight over and over again. It’s an open and vulnerable process that takes a lot of honest conversations with yourself and input from the mentors and friends around you. We can’t do it all on our own, we’re no Superman.

In real life there is no literal fight to prepare for, you’re probably not going to get your hand lobbed off by your evil cyborg father; but you probably will lose a job at some point, go through a breakup, lose someone you care about, or just have a really bad week.

Sometimes our 40 min mark is the fear of being in something new, whether it’s a new job, relationship, or moving to a new town. Any time you find yourself having to step out of your comfort zone you’re making choices that begin to define you.

When these things happen and you find yourself in the cave at your 40 minute mark, do yourself a favor and don’t take your weapons in with you. And I get it, it’s NOT an easy thing to do, it’s a daily process of laying down our defenses, justifications and not turning to our old habits and patterns. It might feel easier to just lash out, switch off, or shut down, but in the long run, there couldn’t be anything worse for your own hero’s journey.

Learn to be open to the chaos around you and feel it without it changing you for the worse, instead let it turn you into something new.

Or like Doctor Cox  on Scrubs says: “Newbie, the only way to judge your growth as a doctor — hell, as a human being — is by making sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over.”