I’ve been incredibly busy over the past few weeks with my first steps into a broader social realm. It’s a new stage of life for me, one that sees me emerging from a more isolated, withdrawn existence into a world with more variety, more stimulation, more possibilities, and yes, more danger. In a post that I wrote some months ago, I described it as dancing with the hurricane, and I’m really coming to experience this more fully now.

As such, I’m going through birthing pains. Every tiny victory brings great joy; every tiny setback feels catastrophic. It’s a wild roller-coaster ride. It’s like learning to stand on my own, to walk a few steps. It feels entirely new, it’s a breaking of many old habits and routines, and it’s both exhilarating and very frightening.

It’s taking a lot of discipline and integrity to stay the course on this unfamiliar route, and a lot of tolerance on my wife’s part, when I get overwhelmed with the stress and take it out on her. This is even more the case when particularly nasty things happen.

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The archetypal heroic quest varies in its details, but the basic structure and assumptions are the same. Good guy struggles against all manner of challenges to attain his goal and win his prize. And all was well and everyone lived happily ever after.

So what happens if that goal is by nature flawed? If the value of that prize is rooted in evil?

That subverts the entire quest, all the way down to the ignorance — or deception — of the hero regarding his own motivations and the ramifications of his actions.

This is the conflict I face in considering the meaning of success in the material world. The contamination of the goal transforms the hero’s journey into a villain’s quest.

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