Hinge Moment

Dave Brisbin 8.9.20 When I first began working in recovery, I heard an AA oldtimer emphatically say that he was grateful to be an alcoholic, and I couldn’t process that statement. How could alcoholism be a good thing? But now a couple decades later, I see how for him, the pain and trauma of his alcoholism created a hinge moment, a point in his life, because of his choice for recovery, that angled the trajectory of his life in a new direction, like an alternate timeline in those time travel movies. Hinge moments are usually only seen in retrospect, years later, but what if we could get a sense of them when they are actually happening? How would that help us step up to the challenges we face and put purpose behind the pain that allows us to overcome? If we consider the shape of the Hero’s Journey—the one story plot we’ve been telling ourselves since we’ve been painting on cave walls—we can get a sense of the shape of our longest journey from birth to death. But we can also begin to see that life is a series of journeys within journeys that always bring us back to our starting point, but altered, with more wisdom and depth with each passage. Every loss we face that changes the world as we knew it, is a call to a hero’s journey. Only question is whether we are answering the call or choosing to sit down in the road, too afraid to move forward and unable to go back. Jesus’ life as recorded in the gospels is a perfect hero’s journey. As is Dorothy Gale’s journey to Oz, Odysseus in the Odyssey, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, and countless other stories. This COVID crisis is a worldwide, collective call to the journey. If we can begin to see ourselves as the hero in our own lives instead of bit players in someone else’s story, we can begin to see the hinge moments, the call to adventure that will take our lives in completely new directions.