Life Cycles
Everything is connected
Because everything is connected, its good to have more than one book on the go at any time. Reading two books and discovering connections between them can be rather revealing. In effect it sets up a dialogue. One author “speaks” to the other – and you get to be the mediator, making sense of each in terms of the other. This makes it a triadic interchange – three people engaged in a search for understanding. This way you and the two authors come into relationship.
For example, I was given Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees. Coincidentally, at the same time, I felt the need to re-read my Penguin version of Homer’s The Odyssey. (The latter for its relevance to my own upcoming book, Leadership as Meaning Making – the Hero’s Journey). The combination of the two, brought insights into the inter-relationship of everything and the unbelievable complexity of cycles in nature. Hence the process generated my appreciation of the cyclic nature of our own dealings with ourselves and our worlds. In my case, it highlighted my own personal Hero’s Journey.
The web of life
We are so accustomed to seeing nature as something other than human. However, humans are inextricably woven into nature’s web of life. The web of life and the complexities of living are mysteries that we can too easily neglect. And yet, because everything is connected, these factors influence all aspects of our being. The cyclic form of the Hero’s Journey is an archetype that illuminates the structure of our lives and, with luck, reveals our route to meaningful existence. We can develop “higher organs of perception” by which to attune to the magic of our own being.
Further reading
If these ideas interest you, we recommend you explore related material on our sites that makes connections with life and work. See Strategy as Fiction and Leadership and Teamwork for a Changing World.
That is also why it is necessary to find places that help and make the effort to connect with your own nature. A place of your own.
Dave Goulson is another who writes engagingly about nature’s intricacies in such books as A buzz in the meadow. The rich background to the Hero’s Journey is found in Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Alternatively from a more practical angle, read Gilligan and Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey.
Author John Varney