King's Corner: Your Wild West
What is the ‘wild west’ to you?
For most people it’s both a place and time, a moment in history around America’s civil war when horizons expanded, and opportunities were available to those tough enough, recklessly ambitious, or simply willing to seek adventure far beyond our settled east coast and midwest. Even today the ‘wild west’ can still capture our imagination.
And what’s the typical ‘wild west’ story that inspires us? Someone has a dream, they toss everything aside to pursue it, but something goes terribly wrong so that they lose almost everything except hope, yet they take a risk with what little they have left, and almost miraculously that comes through. We call this ‘the hero’s journey’ and it inspires us. These tales promise us that at some deep level our life has meaning, and that we’ll find who we truly are through life’s ‘baptism of fire’.
The best tales let us feel laughter, pain, injustice, loss, and test our hero’s capacity to hold onto a dream. While the most obvious contrast might be the villain, the hero’s remarkable endurance comes from having a goal to achieve.
Whose ‘hero’s journey’ inspires you? And in your own life now, where’s your ‘wild west’?
My dad, Mark King, had one of these ‘larger than life’ journeys of his own making. So much of his life fit the lyrics “wide open spaces; room to make a big mistake”. He grew up in a crowded east coast city dreaming of cowboy country. He had a pre-teen taste of open spaces for a few years on a Midwest farm, and then left home on his 13th birthday to ride horses and herd cattle in Wyoming and Australia. He went off to war, survived D-day, was among those conquering Berlin, then built a new life that eventually led him to put down roots near the Comstock.
How many of us would encourage our kids to live this way, to throw aside caution and chase adventure? We do love the stories of taking chances, of swapping comfort for risk, as Kipling said:
“If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss”
Yet we advise our loved ones to stay on the safe path of consistent achievement, of gradual hard work that builds a stable future. We encourage healthy relationships that will gently draw out the best in each other. For instance, many families are starting this new school year with a focus on study, or a journey to start college on some distant campus. Constructive choices. Stretching you a bit, but still safe choices.
While quietly in our imagination, each of us are inspired by the hero’s journey. The wild adventure. The risky, uncertain future. At every age we still long to discover who we’re truly capable of being. Each of us has a dream that the complacency of life has failed to steal away from our hearts. We may be settled, but we’re restless. We believe there’s still more out there for us.
We each dream of our own ‘wild west’.
Do you tell yourself your own story? You’ve faced challenges. You’ve known hurt and broken people who’ve done you harm. Seemingly random circumstances have cost your dearly. Setbacks have stolen your opportunities. We live in a world where cruelty and injustice take their toll on everyone, including you. And even the people who loved you have disappointed you in so many ways. More, we’ve all lost people who were close to us. Yet you’ve gotten through that to get to now. You’ve endured.
Do you still have a dream of where your life could be going? How far have you chased that dream? Sure, you’ve made choices where you swapped short term pleasure for long term gain; we all foolishly have. But is there something that still sits in your heart, where the still small voice that speaks to you says “Don’t forget!” and prods you along that path? Do you have that sense that you were made for something more? Something that might yet be in the offering? The dream is still in you.
So what do you do now? In your quiet, still hours of thought, do you dare ask God? Do you talk out loud and trust that you’re being heard? In those moments where all the demands and impulses of life are suddenly quiet, is there a small voice that encourages you and challenges you to recapture your ‘hero’s journey’ into the ‘wild west’ of your life. A tale of what you endure, what you surrender, what you dream, and what you do. A tale that’s still being written by both God and you.
Are you willing to share your journey with others? And can you do so with humor, and self-reflection? Because being able to laugh at ourselves, and be vulnerable as we share, is incredibly healing.
Mark King was patiently listening to me one day. As he challenged me about how I’d handled something, I could feel some anger rising. He picked up on it right away, smiled and said teasingly, “Oh look! Your hairs are rising. Your red hairs are rising even more!” I couldn’t help but laugh, and all my reaction was refreshingly gone. In the sharing came the perspective I needed, humor mixed with reality and hope.
Where are you in the story of your ‘wild west’? Are you willing to share it with God, listen for his response, and then dream together about the next chapter?
