So of course, I had to read it. The intro, written by a a travel writer named Frank Bures, talked about how disproportionate many of our fears are, and how our fears can be stifling, or even paralyzing.

“We live in the world our great-grandparents dreamed of,” he wrote, “yet we seem incapable of enjoying it, unable to let go of those handrails, ever more afraid of the unknown.” He also noted that some of the things that exhilarate us are exhilarating not despite the risk involved, but because of it. So, Bures concluded, “not taking risks along the way is the biggest risk of all.”

I have somewhat mixed feelings about that. I completely agree that to live ruled by fear is not to live. And there are certainly those who are motivated and rewarded by the very risks (and attendant adrenaline rush) that come with experiences like skydiving, flying, mountain climbing, being a war correspondent and the like.

There are others, of course, who accept the risks of adventure only because they want a particular goal or experience badly enough to take the risks as part of a trade off; who want to know, for example, the feeling of being on top of a glacier-covered mountain, or to understand first-hand how post-Genocide Rwandan women put their lives back together. They decide to take on the risks involved in those adventures but don’t necessarily get any sense of exhilaration out of the risk. For them, the risk is more like the price exacted for something greater in reward.

But regardless of how different people view the risks inherent in the pursuit of passions, dreams, or adventure, the point is still well taken: life is short, and to shrink back in fear from pursuing the joys or dreams or experiences that offer fulfillment, meaning, or make you feel alive is an awful waste.

On the other hand, it’s not always fear that leads someone to pause or choose another path than one most fulfilling to themselves. And sometimes that point gets lost in our enthusiasm for self-fulfillment and life lived to the fullest.

There are only so many hours in a day, and only so much energy in the human body. And that means there are limits to what we can do, and more stringent limits to the number of things we can do well. As a result, all the choices we make involve trade-offs.

If you’re single and living alone, there are fewer tough trade-offs involved if you decide to pursue a passion or dream, whatever it is … mountain climbing, a start-up entrepreneurial effort, changing the world … because there are fewer items you have to balance. A friend of mine has even made a conscious decision to stay single, because he doesn’t want to have to compromise his pursuit of passionate, risky adventures. More power to him, for being that honest and disciplined.

But if you have family obligations, the equation gets tougher. Indeed, I think the fictitious image and fantasy of the person who “has it all” does all of us a grave disservice. Because nobody has it all, if “all” means everything they want, at an excellent or top level of achievement and involvement. The men of the 1960s may have appeared to have it all, in terms of career and family, but as a recent New York Times article pointed out, they weren’t that involved with their families, and the pressure they felt as the sole provider, was intense.

My dad started his own business with an inventor-partner in 1972. And I still remember him getting up at 5 am to drive the hour and a half into the south end of Brooklyn, where their manufacturing facility was located, and getting home at 8 pm or later. He’d ask us about our days, and then fall asleep in mid-sentence of our replies, sitting up in his chair. He was that tired.

Today, that tension is even greater, because career-minded people, entrepreneurial or not, are expected to put in so many more work hours. Ironically, the decision to have children, which then makes us want to teach them to pursue their passions and find fulfillment–because, of course, we want the greatest happiness for them–in the same stroke almost unavoidably limits our own ability be a poster-child role model for that lifestyle, at least in its idealistic, unbridled form. Because if we pursue our passions and dreams without compromise, the thing that may be compromised is the happiness of the very children we wanted to inspire.

I read another New York Times article recently (which, unfortunately, I can’t find the link to, since I can’t remember its title or author) about an independent film director who was finally hitting the big time. The article mentioned that he had two kids, and then quoted him as saying that whatever they did when they grew up, he hoped they wouldn’t feel the passion he did for his work and art. Pressed to explain such a seemingly counter-intuitive idea, the director said that passion is great for the art, but bad for the family.

Is that our only choice? To wish our children a life devoid of passion, so they don’t harm their kids and families? Are passion and dreams inherently unhealthy for, or incompatible with, family life?

The question is too large and complex to answer simply, in a single post. Clearly, there is tension between those two pulls–one’s own pursuits and passions, and the needs and desires of one’s family. One cannot have unlimited focus and energy for both. And perhaps the key is how you define passion. If you define passion as a pull so great you will sacrifice all else on its alter … even your family … then perhaps it is incompatible to have both. On the other hand, I think (although I am open to being corrected on this point), that it is possible to have degrees of passion. Or passion or dreams that you pursue to varying degrees of intensity, depending on whatever else is on your plate at the moment. (Note the past eight months of my life, with all the family crises that have hit: my passion for writing, and this website, is the same as it was before. All that’s changed, temporarily, is my ability to act on that passion with the time, focus, and productivity that I’d like.)

In any event, fear is not the only reason any given person may not be pursuing their dreams and passions to the fullest. The question remains, however … how can we help each other find that sweet spot of the best possible balance–knowing that that spot will be different for each person–among the conflicting pulls in our lives?

More on this to come. And in the meantime, I welcome any and all ideas and thoughts.

For those who read my last couple of posts–a quick update: my mom survived, although she spent 3 months in the hospital. And since my parents clearly need help now, I spent December and January clearing out their house in New York and moving the two of them in with us in Massachusetts. My dad clearly has dementia setting in, which is tough tough tough. And my mom is weak and overwhelmed, using a walker, needing a lot of help, but at least basically healthy now. Still working on fixing up their New York house for sale, establishing a new network of care and medical resources for them here, cooking and cleaning for 5, and balancing three generations of strong and very different personalities under one roof (with very mixed results). And lest we think we were almost out of the woods, my husband is now facing difficult knee replacement and reconstruction surgery at the beginning of March.

As I’ve often said, one of the goals of this website is to provide inspiration for people contemplating or going through planned or unplanned adventures. So I hope the above summary makes at least most of you feel better about your own lives, just by comparison. And if it doesn’t, because you’re going through a stretch just as tough or tougher … at least take comfort that you’re not alone in the swamp.

Indeed, I’ve been amazed, the past few months, at how much company I really do have. I dislocated my wrist jumping out of bed to chase down my dad in the early hours of one morning, soon after my mom went into the hospital. And due to the amount of caretaking, packing, clearing out, cleaning, moving, and such I’ve been doing since then, the soft tissue damage still hasn’t healed. So I’ve had a brace on my right forearm and hand for the past 15 weeks. It leads to interesting conversations at grocery stores and other places where I now need to ask for help.

“Oh, yes, I went through that with my parents,” is a common reply, said with sympathy, softness, and almost heartbreaking kindness. I’ve found people working at Target because they couldn’t take care of their parents and keep their inflexible corporate schedules. I’ve found parents who are raising disabled children. People working two jobs and caretaking parents with dementia when they go home at night. What’s been most eye-opening is the abundance of the stories. I am reminded almost daily of the saying, “Try to be kind to those you meet on the street. You have no idea what burdens they are carrying.”

And yet, finding kindred spirits in as unexpected a place as Target shouldn’t surprise me.

Adventure, as I’ve often said, comes in many forms and guises. The fun kind is the kind we choose–flying onto a glacier, scuba diving some exotic waters, climbing a mountain, kayaking a coastline, or exploring new cultures and lands. But just as educational is the kind we do not choose­­–the kind where life simply throws us out of the “normal” we knew into an unfamiliar, challenging, and uncertain place where there’s no clear way out, or even forward.

This is, of course, the point of my Surviving Uncertainty book. And there’s a whole chapter in it devoted to the importance of friends and kindred spirits, which includes the following notes on the subject:

“One of the most important elements in any epic hero journey tale is the role played by the friends and unexpected guides who appear along the way. Where would Frodo Baggins have been without his good friend Sam? Or Gandalf? Or the enchanted trees, for that matter? Many epic heroes begin by thinking they can conquer the world on their own. None succeed without letting go of that notion, even if they recognize that there are battles–particularly internal battles–we all have to work through on our own.”

“A hero’s journey can be lonely, because it involves walking away from the comfort others are still clinging to, even if you didn’t choose the events that forced you out of that comfort. There will be times when you have to accept that others just don’t understand. But the flip side of that is … in the dark woods and night of a hero’s journey tale, after the hero has walked away from the villagers who can’t follow, or don’t understand, there are always fellow travelers; kindred spirits who appear to keep the hero company and help protect and guide them. That’s not just a fairy tale idea. It’s how the world works.”

So it shouldn’t surprise me when my own words, written with such conviction, prove true again in my own life. And there should be great comfort to others in that, as well. Kindred spirits really do always appear.

I still have a stack of interesting articles and ideas I’ll comment on in the weeks ahead. But first, a few random insights and thoughts from my ongoing adventure, as I face a new and very uncertain year:

The appeal of physical adventure

I have been reminded, once again, of why physical adventures are so appealing to people. Physical adventures are limited-time endeavors, with clear-cut goals and challenges that CAN be overcome. They also allow us to focus on ourselves, instead of others (always more fun), and they almost always involve some new sights, experiences or rewards that are thrilling, exhilarating, beautiful, or sensuous. This makes them far more appealing than some of the other–and arguably more important–adventures in life, which do not have clear starting or end points, involve challenges that cannot really be completed, overcome or conquered, and require us to focus on others instead of feeding our own senses and desires.

But I also find myself wondering why we so glorify people who pursue individual, physical adventures instead of the messier, focus-on-others variety. Climb Mt. Everest and you can get paid to give speeches on it for years. Step up when a family member dies and give up your unencumbered, happy life to raise their kids for them and nobody offers you anything.

I know why, of course. It’s the same reason we want to watch movies about exciting things, rather than mundane daily life. Movies (and magazine stories, or any other public storytelling or recognition) allow us to live vicariously through the excitement and adventure of others. And who wants to vicariously live the life of burdened people walking down the street? No fun in that. (Perhaps reality TV shows are an exception to that, although only because we look at the contestants as negative role models, not admirable ones.)

But there is some important food for thought in that disparity.

The resilience of humans

At least a dozen times in the past five months, I’ve said to myself, “I cannot do this any longer.” And yet, of course, I do. The truth is, humans are amazingly resilient. We can handle far more than we think we can, which should be a comforting thought to anyone who fears that they won’t be enough for the challenges life throws at them. The only caveat to that is … while we can handle almost anything, it is not without cost. And that’s the kicker.

What do we do about that? I’m still working on that one, but I think it’s why the writers of epic hero journeys inevitably give their hero scars from the dark, challenging nights of the journey. George Lucas had Luke Skywalker lose his hand. Ged, in Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy, has his face terribly scarred in his battles.

The important thing, I think, becomes what we do with the scars we accumulate along the way.  More on that later, too.

The importance of patience

Part of the appeal of flying, or adventure sports or challenges, is that is allows us to be actively “in control” of what’s going on around us. (Or, at least to the extent that we convince ourselves we are, even if nature actually has the upper hand.) Nobody likes being helpless. Taking control and taking action are empowering.

But while it may get glossed over in adventure books, there’s an equally important aspect of any physical or life adventure, and that’s the ability to recognize when, to some extent, you simply need to accept waiting it out, or being where you are at the moment. Every VFR pilot knows the frustration of sitting in an airport office, waiting for weather to clear. Well, the same is true in other areas and times of our lives. Sometimes life diverts us from the path we wish to be on, and railing against it doesn’t change anything. In fact, it might blind us to something important along that side trail.

I believe it was the writer Alice Walker who told her students once that those frustrating times of knowing you weren’t where you wanted to be, but not knowing where to go next or exactly how to get there, was actually an important phase, because it was in those times when new ideas or understanding ripened within you.

Acceptance and patience, if combined with a still-open mind, eyes, ears and heart, can, I think, be powerful forces. Attend to the tasks at hand as life requires of you. But even in the exhaustion and frustration, try to listen, still, for what understanding or direction might emerge.

More to come on all of this, as well as other entrepreneurial and adventure thoughts and ideas. And, even if a little belatedly … Happy New Year!

The article is an interview about leadership with Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and current professor at Harvard University. The article appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of Rotman Magazine (a publication of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, which almost always has some thought-provoking and worthwhile articles in it).

In 2007, George co-wrote a book on leadership called True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. I haven’t read the book itself, just the interview in which George talked about the book. So I can’t speak to the quality of the book, one way or another.

Having said that, however, the basic concept that drives the book seems like a worthy and important idea to ponder. It’s not a particularly complex thought; it’s simply that deep success, satisfaction and–not coincidentally–great leadership, comes from being a well-integrated, authentic human being whose actions are aligned with what he or she feels is most important. Or, as George puts it, from finding and following your own sense of “True North.”

In some senses, Professor George’s concept of “True North” is a lot like following a passion, except that it’s possible to follow a passion and still not be a well-integrated, authentic human being in or across the rest of your life. So I think being guided by a sense of True North means something more inclusive and holistic than simply following what ignites your passion. Especially because–at least in the interview–George does not present finding and following that path as an easy, “seven successful habits” or “3 easy steps” process.

“Discovering your True North takes a lifetime of commitment and learning,” George says. “Each day, as you are tested in the world, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and respect the person you see and the life you are leading. Of course, some days are better than others, but as long as you are true to who you are, you can cope with the most difficult circumstances that life presents.”

This sentiment rings particularly true to me at the moment. When things are good and easy, with no crises or hard hits to manage, the choices life throws at you are much easier, because it’s possible to have several things you like or that matter to you at one time. When that sense of true self really matters is when things are bad, or really hard, and you can’t have everything–or even what you thought were some of the basic components–anymore. If you have to make really hard choices about what stays, and what you have to let go of, the only thing that allows you to make that choice and live with it is that sense of integrated clarity about what is most important.

I will only touch briefly on personal details here, because there’s nothing more dreary than someone else’s life problems. (Unless, of course, it’s happening on a reality TV show, in which case, for some bizarre reason I cannot fathom, people find the drama highly entertaining.) But right after I wrote my last post on “Unplanned Adventure,” my mother was taken to the hospital, where she has been ever since. She’s in intensive care at the moment, following major lung surgery. And while she is now expected to survive, life as she knew it, or we knew it, is over.

My father has brain damage and a seizure disorder from a fall a number of years ago and now has some dementia setting in, so he can’t be left alone. It’s also pretty clear they will need to move, and will need help going forward from here, despite their limited funds, so there’s a ton of work ahead to make that happen. And that’s on top of the work of managing the care of someone in the hospital as well as a special needs parent at home, which is not only a full-time job plus some, but also a job that has kept me away from my own home for almost a month already and is going to require me to be away from my home, my office, and my family for at least another few weeks. And when I return home, I’ll be bringing my parents with me. This on top of the family crisis of an injured son we were already managing (the subject of the “Unplanned Adventure” post). I have no idea when we will even be able to think about returning to anything resembling “normal” life.

Not surprisingly, the overwhelming needs of the moment have required that I let go of not only my “normal” life, but also almost all of the professional projects and goals I had for myself this year–and perhaps for longer than that. After all, you never know, when you step off the moving sidewalk, what doors will still be open, when you are finally able to step back on.

When Bill George talks about being tested by life and falling back on your sense of True North to navigate through the challenges, I don’t think he was really referring to the extremes of life crisis. But crisis–along with uncertainty and adventure–comes in many flavors and guises. And even if he was thinking about the uncharted adventure of leadership challenges, rather than the uncharted adventure of extreme family disasters, I think his words still apply.

I mind putting my work on a back burner. I mind letting go of opportunities and connections. My life explorations and writing projects have been my passion for a very long time. So the only thing that allows me to live with the requirement, and choice, to let go of those things for a while, is the sure knowledge that I am doing the most important thing that allows me to look myself in the mirror in the morning and like what I see. For as much as I love the adventures and writing I do on my own, and no matter what great goals or dreams I may have for myself, I have always been clear that the people in my life would, if push came to shove, trump my professional ambitions. Perhaps I hoped I wouldn’t have to make that choice, ever, but that kind of hard choice is what Professor George is talking about. Strength comes from clarity; from knowing what one true thing or commitment you would honor or what priority you would put first, if you had to choose only one.

That clarity makes navigating through the most uncertain, challenging, and uncharted parts of life easier, or at least more manageable. It’s not the same thing as leadership, in and of itself. But a leader who has that kind of integrated personal and professional authenticity and clarity about what matters most in a mission, a business, and life.. is someone who will remain constant and trustworthy, even in uncertain and uncharted waters, and even in the dark of a storm. That may not be the sum total definition of a leader, but it’s certainly an essential ingredient and starting point.

More on this to come at a later date, but for now … the interview (and perhaps even the book) is worth reading.

The piece, written by a very young Georgetown computer science professor named Cal Newport, is titled “Follow a Passion? Let it Follow You.” He argues–much as some marriage counselors do–that passion, like love, follows a solid foundation of a job (or relationship) that has certain positive traits. Those traits, he says (pulling from Daniel Pink’s book Drive,) include “a sense of autonomy and the feeling that you’re good at what you do and are having an impact on the world.” And, he argues, you can find those traits just about anywhere.

Looking for a passion, he says … or, as he puts it, the “Cult of Passion” …puts undue pressure on young people to “pick” the right thing, and make the “right” decision, worried that the wrong choice will screw up your chances of happiness. What’s more, he argues that following passion may lead a person to suffer from constant doubt, anxiety and “chronic job hopping.” So instead of asking “what is this job offering me?” he counsels young people to look instead at “what am I offering this job?”

I have at least three different reactions competing noisily in my head for first dibs responding. But I’ll start with the most compassionate one. I felt sad, reading the piece, that Mr. Newport got such terrible counseling in his school days that somehow led him to see a desire to feel passionate about your path in life is somehow a point of pressure, anxiety, and unhappiness. Perhaps there is another book I need to write, to make this point more clearly, but the search for a path with heart or passion isn’t one made from a sitting position, choosing door A, B, or C and hoping you pick right and that you like what’s behind it.

There may be a few people who know, from the exploration they’ve done in their lives up  to the age of 18, exactly and precisely what turns them on and ignites the fire of passion within them. They are, of course, the radical minority, and a number of them will still find themselves taking a new direction somewhere down the line. Most of us have to try a few things before one makes them feel as if they’ve come “home.” I was 28 before I found a job that felt like that. But the key point about passion is that it isn’t something you “decide” to follow, any more than you “decide” your heart hurts or your stomach is starving. When something resonates passionately with you, from the inside out, regardless of external rewards or status it offers, you know it.

Ah. But how do you find that, if you don’t inherently already feel it? Therein lies the step that Mr. Newport is missing, or perhaps doesn’t want to take. Reading Mr. Newport’s essay, it struck me that he might not be someone comfortable with periods of uncertain exploration. He wanted a path out of college that would be “the one”–just as many young people (particularly women) want to instantly find the romantic equivalent of “the one.” Unfortunately, life doesn’t generally work that way.

There is a bit of exploring required in the course of both romantic and professional life, to figure out what resonates with you inside and lights that fire. Most people really do end up stumbling upon paths (and relationships) that prove passion-filled. You can narrow that search by doing some hard inner searching of what you like, what things come easily to you, what kind of work situations make you happy, how tolerant of financial and physical risk you are, and so forth, and keeping those in mind when evaluating potential job offers. And that analytical assessment is important to keep the search grounded in elements that really do matter to you.

Of course, at the age of 22, just out of college, you have very little real life experience to compare to or go on. So the task at that age, if you’re one of the vast majority who hasn’t already stumbled upon a life’s passion, should be to explore the world and try to gain as broad a range of experiences as possible, to increase your chances of finding something that really resonates with you.

Ironically, juxtaposed with Mr. Newton’s essay on the print page of the New York Times (one reason I am a passionate advocate of the printed newspaper as opposed to the target-specific online world–the print layout allows other rewarding tidbits to catch your attention just by juxtaposition) was an interview with Kristin Groos Richmond, co-founder of Revolution Foods–a start-up that now employs 900 people in 11 states cooking 200,000 healthy meals for school kids every day. Richmond tells how she spent the first few years of her career in investment banking, but didn’t love it, so she decided to explore working in education, a field she’d always liked. She spent two years in Kenya starting a school, then returned to San Francisco, got married, enrolled in an MBA program, and got the idea for a healthy school lunch program during a summer internship with an inner city school program. She didn’t “decide” at the outset what path would be most passionately rewarding. She found passion in the course of some winding turns of exploration and discovery.

Indeed, what comes most to mind about Mr. Newton’s advice and argument is its similarity with the advice of women who argue for marrying “Mr. Good Enough” or–seriously–marriage counselors who claim that love is a choice. (Way more to say on that topic than fits here, but the basic idea that anyone can or will do, within a certain range of attributes, is the comparison point I’m referring to.)

To be sure: having a sound analysis and sense of what qualities matter to you is important in choosing a path or partner in life. And as my friend Randy Komisar (a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley) says, it really helps to figure out what you really are passionate about. Komisar started out working in the music industry, managing bands. But he figured out that his real passion wasn’t music per se; it was helping and participating in the creative process, and enabling people to bring creativity into the world. That insight helped lead him to venture capital work, which it turns out he loves as much as he did managing bands.

But it’s not that ANY job would have ignited Komisar’s passion. Or even one that he was good at, gave him a sense of autonomy, and allowed him to have impact. (My husband has a job that has all those qualities, and it most certainly is NOT one he loves or is passionate about.) It was figuring out what he was truly passionate about and looking for–and experimenting with–a path that resonated with and fed that passion that got him where he is today.

It’s possible, of course, that Mr. Newport loves his professor job because it really does contain elements that ignite passion within him. Which is to say, that even though he didn’t realize he was doing it, he was stumbling upon a passionate path all along. But it’s also possible that he “loves” his job in an okay kind of way, just as people can love an “okay” partner without feeling passion for them. Contentment and satisfaction are enough for some people. And I say that without a trace of judgment. Everyone has to find what matters most to them in life. But contentment and satisfaction are not the same thing as passion.

Mr. Newport’s essay ends, “Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.”

I fundamentally disagree. Passion may be something you discover along the way of a path, but it is not something you follow; it’s something that compels you forward, regardless of the obstacles or how hard the path gets. What Mr. Newport is describing is something more akin to satisfaction and contentment. He may be perfectly happy. But would he stick with this career field, and his job, if it became excruciatingly difficult to pursue? Would he sacrifice other elements of his life for it? Hard to say from a single essay, but I’m not so sure.

Passion may not be for everyone. But the professionals and married people I’ve always envied the most, and looked to for guidance as to where the most rewarding of paths lay, were–and still are–those people who’ve found not just satisfaction in their personal and professional lives, but who are compelled forward by the light of passionate commitment.

As anyone who’s read anything on this blog knows by now, I’m a huge advocate of adventure, even when it isn’t comfortable. I also believe that adventure can be worthwhile, even when it isn’t planned. But while planned and unplanned adventure may both entail uncharted terrain, unplanned adventure is generally tougher to navigate, because you aren’t a willing participant in it. There you are, heading to the store for a quart of milk, and WHAM!  Life blindsides you with a whallop that transports you, unprepared and against your will, into the middle of a harsh and foreign wilderness, with no suggestions as to how to navigate through it, or even what to do next.

Generally speaking, unplanned adventure also tends to be caused by … well … something bad. Rarely do you start out for work and find yourself suddenly rich and famous, unsure how to navigate your new celebrity status. Usually, unplanned adventure involves some kind of sudden, unexpected, and painful turn of events: a death or accident in the family, a life-altering illness or injury, the loss of a job, the discovery of a cheating spouse, the end of a marriage, economic collapse, or some other event that crumbles the foundations of something really important in our lives, casting us–at least temporarily–adrift, in one way or another. The way back is blocked, and we have to find a new way home, or forward.

So it was, a little over a month ago, that I walked in the house with fresh fish to make a special dinner and picked up the ringing phone to hear my husband Ed tell me that his older son, who’d just finished a degree at the Culinary Institute of America and had gotten a job as a chef in Louisville, Kentucky, had been hit by a car while riding his bike to work. The hospital hadn’t been specific about how bad the injuries were, just that he was about to go into surgery, they were projecting a 5-6 week hospital stay, and that Ed might want to think about getting down there.

So quickly, life turns. And so much worse, if it involves the life of your child.

There is no manual to tell you how to help a spouse deal with that kind of traumatic event. Or how to navigate the uncharted terrain and minefields that follow. And yes, I recognize the irony of that statement, given that I’ve actually written a bit of a manual on navigating uncharted landscapes: my Surviving Uncertainty book (Now available in paperback through this website, soon to be available in electronic formats, as well).

Of course, even in that book, I note that nobody else can really tell you how to navigate your own challenging hero’s journey. Others (like me) can offer some general advice and the benefit of whatever lessons and insights we’ve gained from our own crossings. But each hero’s journey is unique. What’s more, the rewards of the journey come from figuring the way out yourself. But Surviving Uncertainty also focuses on coping more effectively with planned or unplanned uncertainty when the primary adventure is happening to you. Being the supporter on the sidelines while other family members bear the primary burden of navigating those waters is, in some ways, tougher than doing it yourself. And it requires a lot more finesse.

Looking back on the last five weeks, however, I would say that in many ways, the way forward is still the same. Bereft of a guide as to how to proceed, you experiment. You take a step forward; offer what you think will be helpful advice or feedback. If that backfires, you step back and reconsider another approach. From that, you evaluate: what does this tell me that my spouse really needs from me? That’s a tricky one, because you find that it changes day by day and minute by minute, sometimes without warning. You try to remember to breathe. To keep panic at bay by focusing on what tangible things you can do “right now,” instead of worrying about all the future possibilities and problems –because fear exists in the future. In the moment, we cope far better than we think we will. You look for kindred spirits; people to turn to for your own support. You try to get enough sleep. You prioritize the most essential tasks you need to do with your limited energy and ruthlessly loadshed everything else.

You look for information and you research options–and you learn (often the hard way) that you need to be judicious about when and how much of that information you share. Sometimes, people are too emotionally agonized to hear logic or data, no matter how good that information might be. There’s a time for providing information, and a time for providing simple comfort. And there are times when everything you do will be wrong, because all the other person can hear or see or feel is the pain.

So you stumble your way forward. And, just as when I had to make my way across that glacier in shorts and tennis shoes (the opening story in Surviving Uncertainty), you try your best not to get overwhelmed at the distance you have to cross, but to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, one difficult step at a time.

The first couple of weeks were the hardest, because it was so new, so raw, and so much was uncertain. In the end, however, we have been relatively lucky. The only big question that remains, two surgeries and five weeks later, is whether Ed’s son will regain use of his right arm and hand again. Not to minimize–that is no small question for a young, right-handed chef. And the road ahead–for him, and for all of us–remains both forever different and, for at least the next year, uncertain. But it could have been so, so, so much worse.

I knew that anyway. But if I needed any reinforcement for that, I got it soon after the accident, when I was sent to Reno, Nevada to cover the National Air Races. You know … the Reno Air Races. As in, the event last year where a race plane went out of control and plunged into the spectator stands, killing or injuring 85 people.

I wrote a full article on the comeback of the races, which will be in the November issue of Sport Aviation. But through a series of chance encounters and moments, I ended up being invited to join the survivors of the accident last year–the people whose boxes were closest to the place the plane hit and who had been most impacted by the accident­­–to watch the races on Saturday and Sunday. Some were family members of those killed. Others were literal survivors–people who’d lost or seriously injured limbs, eyes, or other body parts, and had scars they would carry for the rest of their lives.

Looking at the walkers, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and scars, it was very clear just how much worse our own situation could have been. I was also acutely aware that behind the cheerful faces the survivors had on for the public–and the very real joy they clearly felt at being back, and being as healthy as they were–was a year’s worth of painful steps and struggles to adapt to a body, life and future forever changed. And that ahead lay more of the same.

I also knew, having survived a near-fatal car accident myself at the age of 20 that left its own share of internal and external scars, that it would probably be some time before any of those people would be able to say that the adventure and journey forward from the tragedy had given them any positive gifts or wisdom. At first, all you can see is what it has taken away. You’re grateful to be alive, of course, but unplanned adventure generally has a bitter taste in its initial stages, even if it leaves an unexpected gift of richness once it’s fully processed and digested. And there’s no guarantee, even, of that.

A couple of days ago, I heard a number of people interviewed on NPR who’d survived, or who were family members of victims, of the October 2002 terrorist bombing in a Bali nightclub that killed over 200 people Ten years later, one survivor said he wouldn’t be the person he is today if he hadn’t experienced the unplanned adventure of surviving, and recovering from, that attack. But he also said that he thought some people had come to some level of peace or acceptance with what had happened, and others hadn’t. Some, he thought, never would.

It made me think, again, that adventure–and especially unplanned adventure–does not guarantee any particular results. Unplanned adventure, in particular, asks us to find strength inside of us. It asks us to adapt and learn from that adaptation. But there’s no rule or guarantee that any particular person will actually find that strength, learning, wisdom, or growth. Unplanned adventure guarantees challenge. It presents only the possibility of growth and opportunity.

Once upon a time, I used to think that crisis made people strong. In truth, crisis more often simply reveals what we are able to find at the core. For some, that’s strength and emotional, mental, or insightful gifts we never dreamed we had. Sadly, not everyone is able to find those things.

But life happens. And when it throws unplanned and unwanted adventure our way, we fare better if we do our best to meet the challenges it presents: first, to survive as best we can. And second, to at least look for what we can learn, or gain, from having to summon such strength and resources to cope with both the immediate challenges and also the “new normal” that life-altering events requires us to adapt to.

In that sense, it humbled me to see what some of the Reno survivors have been able to see, even through their tears. One guy, who lost one arm below the elbow, had nerve damage in the other, had both legs crushed and a head injury, was intensely positive in the encouragement he had for my stepson. “Hey, ” he said. “Being a chef is in your taste buds, your nose, and your head. And he’s got all that! And that training! I envy him, man. I couldn’t be a chef even if I had two good arms. I mean, you can always get someone else to chop the onions, if you need to.” He paused for a moment.  “You can make it okay,” he concluded fiercely. “You just have to decide you’re going to.”

Then there was the family who’d sustained a breathtaking amount of loss from the crash. The mother had been killed. The father had lost a leg. Two of the sons had each lost a leg, and one of their wives had lost a leg. And yet, one of the sons told me, “we just want to thank everyone here for everything they did for our family. We feel a special bond with everyone here. They helped save my family’s lives.” He, too, paused. Emotions still ran high, this year. But after a minute, he continued. “We lost our mom that day. But we also lost any cynicism we ever had.”

In the end, the reason so many of the survivors had returned to a place that surely must have held bad memories for them, seemed to be that the good memories–of just how powerful community can be, when it bonds together, and how powerful love can be, when it is poured out in need–so clearly outweighed the bad. Already, they have learned that. And that truth is, indeed, a rare, powerful and comforting gift to hold in your hands.

What the future holds for any of us is still unclear. There will be challenges, for sure. But I hope there continue to be opportunities for growth and learning, as well. And maybe even unexpected gifts to be found, where and when we least expect them.

For me, you see, John McPhee will always bring to mind images of a tiny town in coastal Alaska by the name of Yakutat. I don’t even know that McPhee ever even visited the place. If I had to take odds, in fact, I’d say he probably didn’t. Yakutat is tucked into the coastline about halfway between Sitka and Anchorage, has a grand total of 800 people living there. It also has a road system that goes exactly one mile out of town before coming to an abrupt halt on the far side of a bridge built by residents obviously hopeful of something a little bigger. Everything in Yakutat has to be brought in by plane or boat, and the local industry pretty much consists of fishing or canning, although the locals are trying to get some tourism to take root there.

It’s a town very much like the one profiled in the television show Northern Exposure, except maybe a little smaller. It’s very dark in the winter, and the coastal rain and fog are prodigious. So when I arrived to do an article on the salmon fishing industry there, I took one look and summed it up as a hick town in the middle of nowhere. Pretty, to be sure, but undoubtedly bereft of culture or intellectual stimulation.

One of the fishermen I interviewed there, who was thinking of trading in his fishing boat for a tourist boat because a combination of factors had driven salmon prices down too far to make a profit anymore, took me out in his outboard runabout boat to show me a bit of what the area had to offer. As we scooted across Yakutat Bay, he asked me what magazines I wrote for. I listed several, including, I said, ” a couple of New York magazines.” (I was writing pieces for ForbesLife and Elite Traveler magazines at that time).

“Did you say you wrote for The New Yorker?” he asked. I was a little taken aback that he even knew of the publication. No, I told him, just a couple of magazines based in New York.

“Ah,” he said with a thoughtful nod. “Because, you know, I love John McPhee’s writing there. Have you ever read any of his stuff?”

In all of my world travels, that moment remains one of my favorites of unexpected discovery; one of those times you are forced to completely re-evaluate a person or situation and remind yourself to be a little less sure of yourself in the future. There I was in a dirty, working skiff of a blue-collar fisherman, skimming across a remote bay in Alaska, discussing literature and articles from the elite New Yorker magazine with the liveliest of intellectual companions. It was surreal, it was wonderful, and shame on me for assuming, even if it was unconsciously, that one could only be a fisherman OR a purveyor of great writing and ideas. So since then, I have held John McPhee in special esteem for unwittingly teaching me an important and humbling caution and lesson about what I allow myself to assume.

Of course, McPhee is also a great writer and thinker in his own right. And in my belated catching-up of old magazine articles this summer, I came across a piece he wrote last fall–once again, for The New Yorker–that offers a great window to how inspiration and ideas come about.

Called “Progression,” the article  traces how McPhee himself came up with some of the ideas he’s written about. (Here’s a link to the source, although there’s a fee to read it if you’re not a subscriber.)

Just getting a window inside a successful creative mind to chart how all those great ideas came about is worth the read. But there are parallels in his piece to the search many of us go through–not just looking for article idea, inspiration or subject to pursue, but looking for an idea, inspiration, or goal to pursue, period.

How do you choose a particular hobby, career, or path in life? How do you get inspiration or the sure certainty that this project, topic, or idea is one worth pursuing?  As McPhee says in the piece,

“Why choose that one over all other concurrent possibilities? … Ideas are everywhere. They just go by in a ceaseless stream. Since you may take a month, or ten months, or several years to turn one idea into a piece of writing, what governs the choice? I once made a list of all the pieces I had written in maybe twenty or thirty years, and then put a check mark beside each one whose subject related to things I had been interested in before I went to college. I checked off more than ninety percent.”

It’s just more evidence that we aren’t as lost as we might imagine in the overwhelming world of choices as an adult. There are certain things, whether it’s certain subjects, types of work, causes, settings, an activities, that we are, for one reason or another, drawn to. And while some people only discover their leanings as adults, I suspect that the seeds for what we become passionate about pursuing are, indeed, often laid in childhood.

That doesn’t mean those clues are obvious to see. I doubt McPhee realized that his writing subjects were so tied to things he’d been interested in as a kid until he did that little looking-back exercise. That’s what makes it tricky. It’s much harder to see the patterns looking forward. But it also means that we can find important compass clues by looking back from wherever we are in life. What did I like most to do as a teenager? What things did I get fired up about? What kinds of activities did I like to do?

The second piece of the equation, of course, is exploring forward from those basic inclinations. And that, too, McPhee talked about in the piece. As he put it,

“Ideas are where you find them, and  … new pieces can shoot up from other pieces, pursuing connections that run through the ground like rhizomes. Set one of those progressions in motion, and it will skein out in surprising ways, finally ending in some unexpected place.”

If there is a secret wisdom to finding a passionate path in life, that’s pretty much it. Figure out what types of things you have always found compelling, and then explore outward from those roots to wherever they lead you, with a mind open to the unexpected jewels, inspiration, or places you might find along the way.

As with writing, so with life: the shortest path to a place you love is rarely a straight line. And it’s often that exploratory journey, seemingly inefficient and frustrating as it may be in the midst of it,  that not only gets you to that place, but also allows you to recognize that spot, once you arrive, for the jewel it really is.

So on a recent trip, I found myself reading through the November 14th issue of the New Yorker. (And yes, that would be November, 2011.) I found I could skim right past the articles on Herman Cain and Jon Huntsman’s primary prospects, but I found one on Steve Jobs and innovation that was still fresh–even if I disagreed with the author’s conclusion.

The article, called “The Tweaker,” was written by Malcolm Gladwell–a man I consider a good writer but a somewhat more flawed, and often more shallow, thinker. The article’s point was that Steve Jobs, especially as portrayed by his biographer, Walter Isaacson, was skilled not at coming up with entirely new ideas, but at “tweaking” existing products and technologies to make them better.

Not that Gladwell was dissing the value of tweakers. The article listed a whole string of tweakers throughout history who, among other things, made the industrial revolution possible. And nobody would argue that Jobs was a perfect man or visionary. But in comparing Jobs with Bill Gates, Gladwell concluded that “Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’ vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man.”

That made me think. Is it really so much “grander” to imagine contributing your money to world causes than to imagine and build a brilliant desktop publishing system, or an iPhone instead of just a better iPod or MP3 player? What makes one vision “grand” or somehow greater than another? Is Bill Gates the greater visionary simply because his philanthropy was on a grand scale? And how DO we judge the quality or grandness of a person’s vision?  Is it on the scope of its impact? The size of the challenge?

If what makes a vision “grand” is scale–in terms of how many people it will impact, or how much it will transform their lives–then it’s hard to argue that the vision of transforming personal computing and using computer technology to transform how people work, publish, communicate and receive entertainment is anything but grand. If the standard of great vision is boldly exploring or conquering completely unimagined and unexplored territory, Gates’ philanthropy wouldn’t qualify, either. Bill and Melinda Gates are not, after all, not the first people to imagine eradiating malaria or improving education in third-world countries. They’re just trying to do it more effectively, with a lot more firepower, and potentially in different ways, than has been attempted before. Which is, essentially, the same “tweaking” that Gladwell accused Jobs of doing.

It’s probably true that eradiating malaria is more important, in life and death terms, than transforming how people communicate on the go. Anyone who purchases an Apple product is not on the edge of poverty or survival. And a vision of how to cure cancer would be far more significant than a vision of how to keep staplers from jamming. So one could argue that one person’s successful vision is more “significant” than another’s. But to label Jobs a “tweaker” vs. a visionary is, I think, a bit of an artificial distinction.

Visionaries, to my way of thinking, are people who can imagine something that does not yet exist, and has never existed before … and can also envision a successful path forward to make those things real. Maybe there was a computer before Jobs and Wozniak invented the first Apple computer, and there were MP3 players before the iPod and the iPhone. But nobody “saw” what Steve Jobs saw–either in terms of the machines’ possibilities, or the impact those machines could have on people. By the same token, if Bill and Melinda Gates “see” a way to solve the problems of malaria and education in third world countries, or a way to leverage rich people’s money to accomplish those goals that works differently and more effectively than existing methods … that, too, is vision.

But the challenging piece of vision is imagining an innovative solution or idea that doesn’t yet exist. And that’s equally challenging whether that solution or idea is a new way of bringing food to the homeless, of bringing clean water to the world’s poor, figuring out a new way of making artificial joints last longer, or developing communication or data devices so streamlined, beautiful and easy to use that suddenly millions of people change their behavior to incorporate them. And it takes no less vision to imagine a transformative change on a local scale than it does something global. The details, number of people involved, and complications may go up the broader your scale is, but the vision can be equally brilliant.

Indeed, in some ways, being continually innovative and transformative in a single industry is far more difficult than making a splash in several. Think of writers who write one great book but whose later books don’t measure up to the first. That’s because it’s hard to come up with something new in the same ground you’ve already mined for gold. Believe me, I know.

What’s more, even “revolutionary” technology, like the personal computer itself, is generally an evolution from what was known, even if there’s one discovery or evolutionary advancement that suddenly changes all the rules. Spacecraft evolved from rockets used in WWII. The internal combustion engine evolved from the steam engine. Even Richard Whitcomb, the Collier Trophy-winning engineer who was the first to “see” how airplanes had to be designed to make them slip smoothly through supersonic shock waves was building on existing aeronautical knowledge, and existing airplane designs. For that matter, even Wilbur and Orville Wright were building their glider and airplane designs on the shoulders of other’s ideas and inventions before them.

One can argue how significant an impact Apple products have had, but it would be hard to argue that they weren’t transformative. And while it’s easy, in hindsight, to see the path that led from previous advancements or innovations, the genius is in seeing that particular path forward when it doesn’t yet exist; when all that lies ahead is a brambled forest of the unknown future, with a million possible directions to take.

Was Steve Jobs a better visionary than anyone else? No. He was just better known than some. But the effort it takes anyone to envision an alternate future and a way to make that goal possible to attain is the same, regardless of what the vision is. If I have any beef with the press given to Steve Jobs, or visionaries in the high-tech field in general, it’s only that I wish all the other important visionaries–passionate people charting unmapped trails into a better future around the world, in ways local and global, simple and complex–could get a little more press and recognition in the mix.

For more information on the origins of the “I Do This Because” essays, see my own entry. And, as always, if you know of anyone you think would make a good guest essayist, or have your own answer to why you’re pursuing the particular, challenging path you’re pursuing, please share it!

About the Author

Milli Chennell is a volunteer Peace Corps worker who is just finishing up two years of living in a small village on the island of Fiji, in the South Pacific. That might sound like paradise but, as she relates, working in a poor village on Fiji is a very different experience than staying in a beach resort. However, this is not the first experience Milli has had, living outside the United States. She was raised in McMinnville, Oregon and got her commercial pilot’s license there, but she lived in Germany as a child, lived in Costa Rica following college, and then spent 15 months teaching English in Japan. Before joining the Peace Corps, she’d worked as a caterer, chef, waitress, tutor, teaching assistant, airplane mechanic, and watershed manager.

“I could probably be described as having a wanderlust, rather than a thirst for adventure,” she says–although anyone following a passion for wandering and exploring the world is almost guaranteed to find adventure, whether they’re looking for it or not.

What will she do when she leaves Fiji next month? She says she’s interested in solving environmental problems and working in international development. But really, she says, what’s next, at this point, is … “The Unknown.”

Her adventures, in other words, are far from over.

For more information on Milli and her work and life in Fiji–including some great photos–visit her blog.

I Do This Because …

…of smiles.
Of children understanding.
Of women excited to do something for themselves.
Of youths thanking me for an opportunity.
Of officials knowing someone is helping these people, too.
Of expats who are amazed by our dedication and perseverance.
Of men who know change has to come.
Of people who will remember me for helping.
Of Americans who don’t have the courage, or opportunity but wish they did
Of the world that needs people to understand one another
And because if I didn’t, I would have failed my own commitment to myself and to everyone else I’ve helped show that there is another way; that they can do it, that they are cared for and that there is someone willing to do the hard jobs.

This morning, like many of you, I woke up, had breakfast, fit in a workout, cleaned up and went to work.

For me–though–work is quite a changeable thing. One day it might mean leading an aerobics class and attending the workshop on how to make virgin coconut oil that I encouraged the women’s group to hold. Another day it could be sitting on a veranda preparing pandanus leaves for weaving.  And some days, it’s enough just to get the laundry washed and on the line before making lemon muffins to share with people in the village.

This is the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer stationed in Fiji. My life. It is in turn frustrating, boring, confusing, lonely, tedious and slow. But I do it. I do it because it’s rewarding.

The first three months were hard. Who am I kidding? The first NINE months were hard! I couldn’t find my place in the village, I had no idea what I was supposed to be accomplishing, and I just watched from afar as friends back home got married, had babies, changed and grew. I felt like I was stagnating. But every so often something happened to make it worth it, like dressing up for Halloween and teaching the kids to carve pumpkins, celebrating Diwali (the Hindi festival of lights), or being chosen as a bridesmaid for a village wedding. Those days, few and far between, would bring my spirits up for a while. But soon I’d be back to wondering why I was here.

And then, miraculously, after eight months, something happened. I don’t know how or why, but things started falling into place. I had a project–or two or three–to work on, the women’s group started working closely with me, and I found Laite, my champion, without whom I couldn’t get anything done.

That isn’t to say everything’s easy now. But at least I have a target. The EASIEST thing I do is teaching aerobics–something I have NO experience in. And even that doesn’t pan out sometimes–there are days when half the village is attending a funeral or when it’s a good day for fishing and aerobics gets put on the back burner. More complex projects are exponentially harder–like building a bread oven when the men doing the work refuse to follow the (very detailed and self-explanatory) plan. Or even setting a date for the virgin coconut oil workshop that was originally supposed to happen six months ago.

This is what I want to leave these people: the empowerment to do what they want to do and the knowledge that they can do it themselves if they want to. I want to build the capacity of the women in the village so that they have the space, the resources, and the mindset to reach for their goals. But–man–sometimes I want to quit. Sometimes I go straight home from a frustrating meeting where I only half understood what was going on, but it was clear that NOBODY got what I was saying. I shut the door, flop on the bed and try to convince myself that it doesn’t matter. I’m not the one who decides, it’s not my project, it’s not my village, it’s not my life. For the most part, it works. It’s how I’m able to keep doing this–keep waking up and going to work. Because if you feel like giving up, what you have to do is give up your expectations, give up your attachment to the end result, but don’t give up trying.

On the other hand, the challenge makes it even more rewarding. Imagine what it’s like to bake bread for the first time in an oven you had to agonize over. Imagine the looks on the women’s faces, imagine the pride they’re feeling when they realize they’ve done something that at one time seemed impossible–and that they did it themselves. All I did was encourage, guide and help them find motivation. Imagine the doors that open–the sense that they can do anything if they try hard. Of course it’s fun to prance around in aerobics class–hey–maybe it’ll help raise awareness about healthy lifestyles and prevention of heart disease and diabetes. Compare that, though, with the satisfaction of having submitted an application (written by the village women) for funding of a new Women’s Resource Center and (hopefully) eventually receiving the funding! Every step on the way to submitting the application there were trials; the quote the carpenter gave wasn’t applicable to the project, for instance. But every time we meet an obstacle with ingenuity and find the ability to overcome it, the women I work with are more empowered.

This is why I do what I do. This is why I’m here.

Big skies, and big oceans, have always both calmed and inspired me. Even when life was hard. Sitting by an ocean, listening to the sound of the waves crashing rhythmically on the sand and watching the endless pattern of water moving toward shore–building, tumbling and receding again into the depths of such a great expanse–has always given me a renewed sense of hope and possibility, even if I couldn’t explain exactly why.

I still don’t know exactly why I have that reaction. But it seems that not only do a lot of people have the same reaction … but there’s actually a scientific basis for my belief in the power of nature and broad expanses to change my perspective and unblock my creative mind.

The scientific term for the cause of this reaction is “embodied cognition,” and it refers to the subtle but significant impact of the body’s experience on the mind’s perceptions and thoughts. Hold something heavy, and you’re likely to perceive the subject at hand as more serious. Hold something warm, and you’re likely to perceive the person you’re talking to as warm, as well. It’s almost embarrassing, how vulnerable to suggestion our minds apparently are.

But be that as it may, it seems our bodies’ physical surroundings also influence how creative our minds are, as well. A group of psychologists recently published the results of a series of experiments that tested the impact of various physical environments on subjects’ ability to come up with creative solutions to problems. In one, two groups of subjects were given the same creative task–to come up with as many possible words that would fit with three “clue” words provided to them. One group, however, had to do the task while sitting in a 125-cubic-foot box. The other group got to sit in an open area. The group confined in the box came up with 20% fewer creative solutions.

The researchers also tested the ability of subjects to come up with creative uses for objects while following a rectangular path versus subjects who were allowed to walk in any direction or manner they wished. Again, those who were less constrained came up with 25% more creative ideas. And yes, this bodes ill for the entire concept of office cubicles.

But it also explains why pilots often say they come back from a flight with an inspired idea about how to solve some sticky business problem that had stymied them before their flight. The sky is certainly one of the most unrestricted environments a human can immerse themselves in. But I’m sure the same is true for sailors, scuba divers, and any other athlete whose sport immerses them in open expanses of wilderness or nature. What our bodies feel or experience is echoed in the limits or possibilities our minds perceive.

The good news, of course, is that this scientific “proof” of our need for open spaces and the opportunity to wander freely if we want to be at our creative best offers a really good excuse for leaving the office and heading out to the ocean, the hills, or the sky. Especially as summer approaches, with its tempting warmth, color, and rush of sensory delights. That afternoon at the beach, or hiking along a ridgeline, or flying low over the local landscape, might actually be far more productive than anything you could do in an office cubicle or meeting. Just say you’re heading out to go think outside the box for a while. It’s not only a good line … it has, as the saying goes, the added advantage of being true.

The emotional scars of battle trauma existed long before any psychiatrist came up with the term “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” or PTSD. World War I veterans came home with permanently darker views of the world, and many World War II veterans refused to ever speak about what they’d been through overseas. (A note on that: I highly recommend the 1950s film “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” as an early attempt to explore and publicize that struggle for returning WWII veterans). The difference now is that we talk about it more. And more mental health professionals are focusing on coming up with better treatment options for it.

But a New York Times magazine article I read this spring got my attention, because it described a different approach for coping with post-traumatic stress–one that not only resonated with my own experience and philosophy, but which also is very much in keeping with the message of this website. In the mid-1990s, two researchers at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, discovered that trauma could have more than one effect on individuals. Immediately, of course, it was, well … traumatic. Stressful, debilitating, painful and difficult. But they also discovered that many people who’d been through serious traumatic experiences also reported, down the line, that they had “a renewed appreciation for life, they found new possibilities for themselves; they felt more personal strength; their relationships improved; and they felt spiritually more satisfied.”

To put it in my own terms, what the researchers discovered was that the traumatic path those people had walked had, for them, been something of a hero’s journey: dark and difficult along the way, and scarring in ways that would never heal completely, but ultimately transformative in ways that vastly improved both their lives and their ability to cope with whatever came after that.

Interestingly enough, the U.S. Army has now integrated that approach into an official training program to try to give soldiers the psychological resiliency to look past the pain of trauma to the possibilities for growth the experience might also offer. The program was spearheaded by recently retired Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum–who many people would recognize as the Army flight surgeon who became a POW after her helicopter was downed in the first Gulf War, killing five on board. Cornum was pinned under the wreckage but managed to crawl out despite two broken arms, a bullet in her back, torn knee ligaments and numerous other injuries. She was then sexually assaulted on the way to prison. And yet, Cornum later told a TIME magazine reporter that while being a POW was “a rape of your entire life,” she said what she learned “in those Iraqi bunkers and prison cells is that the experience doesn’t have to be devastating, that it depends on you.”

One could argue that a woman with that approach to facing death, assault and imprisonment and who made her way through a predominantly male hierarchy to become a Brigadier General doesn’t actually need a hero’s journey. But the point of the Army training is to try to give everyday soldiers the kind of psychological perspective and strength to enable them to search for the learning amidst the pain.

I’m not convinced that every painful experience in life has something to teach us, other than how much damage we can sustain and still keep breathing. And even the psychologists focusing on Post-Traumatic Growth say that growth is not a given for traumatized individuals. What’s more, the truth is that growth and pain can co-exist. And sometimes, the growth only happens some time after the pain lessens.

But I think the article is well worth reading, for anyone. And the idea of post-traumatic growth certainly resonates with my own life experience and philosophy. I wouldn’t wish a near-fatal car accident like the one I had when I was 20, living in New Zealand, far away from family and friends, on anyone. But having been through that experience, and fighting for not only my life, and my sanity, but to somehow find a way to re-integrate into a society filled with people whose lives were still untouched by tragedy, unquestionably transformed me and formed the basis of the life I have lived ever since. A life, I might add, that is far richer, more grounded, and better quality than the one I might have lived, had that accident not happened.

Hero journeys are not always sought. And sometimes, they consist of realizing how much a difficult or traumatic experience has taught us … or can teach us, if we step back a little and look at more than just the ugly scars it left. As Richard Tedeschi, one of the UNC researchers who first coined the phrase “Post-Traumatic Growth” put it, “The challenge is to see the opportunities presented by this earthquake. Don’t just rebuild the same crappy building you had before. Why not build something better?”

Indeed, it is the building of something better that distinguishes a hero’s journey from a victim’s tragic tale. So there’s important lessons in this topic for all of us. But it’s also encouraging to see a program that’s trying to help soldiers and veterans work their way through the darkness of their pain to the epic hero’s triumphant Return we wish they all could have.