Sometimes We Need a Revelation

The much-loved Irish musician Glen Hansard died this week, in a motorbike crash on the outskirts of Dublin. I've been listening to his music ever since I heard the news. One song in particular, Revelate, finally brought forth an article I had been trying to eke out for some time, to no avail.

This article is about the struggle, vulnerability and uncertainty involved in pursuing a career that is truly meaningful to us. It's about what you can expect when you aim for a life of purpose. It has become important for me to write because, having been involved in coaching for over thirteen years, a significant amount of it in the world of MBAs, I can't help feeling that many people are being seduced by the idea of a life of purpose without any idea of what they are getting themselves into.

If people were more aware of what seeking a life of purpose actually entails, and still wanted it, I believe they would be far more likely to succeed. Too many give up at the first sign of difficulty.

Hansard's own beginning is the stuff of legend. Completely disengaged at school and regularly in trouble, the thirteen-year-old found himself in detention in front of his principal, Frankie Burns. Rather than punishing him, Burns took the time to find out what made him tick. Music, as it turned out. Glen came alive when he talked about it.

What Burns did next was extraordinary. Impressed by the boy's depth of understanding, he told Glen that if music was really what he wanted, he'd get him out of school, but he'd have to start at the very bottom, on the street, and work his way up. And then the line that stayed with Glen all his life: "Do me a favour. Don't go home and watch TV for a couple of years and then drift into some job you don't care about."

The story goes that Glen went home feeling he had permission to pursue his dream, and immediately started busking on the streets of Dublin. He went on to win an Oscar, and to do much more along the way.

This is the call to adventure so many of us long for. The Hero's Journey. Allowing that which gives us bliss to guide us.

Joseph Campbell, who gave us the Hero's Journey, was just as interested in what happens when we don't answer. He called it the refusal of the call, and he observed that the refused call doesn't simply disappear. The adventure turns negative. Life goes flat, dries up, loses its significance. The dream we decline doesn't leave us alone; it goes underground and aches.

But Revelate sits at a different point on that journey, and this is where the legend gets honest. Glen explained that he wrote the song to himself early in his career, at a time when he was struggling to get a record deal. He had answered the call. He was living the dream. And he was on the floor.

The song carries themes of longing, meaning and self-redemption, themes that are ever present in coaching conversations. It speaks, at least to me, of the need for revelation as a means of overcoming, the sometimes overwhelming realities, when we choose to follow our dreams.

"Sometimes I need a revelation / 'Cause sometimes it's all too hard to take"

This is a man at a low point, calling out for inspiration to come from somewhere. Despite having a vision of what he wants to become, he seems to have made mistakes, found himself somewhere that doesn't feel right, and needs something to spur him on.

"I f***ed it up / I rest my case / This is all too grey / My revelate"

Here is the part not enough people know. Having the vision, being clear about what truly makes you feel alive, does not protect you from low points. In fact, it makes them harder to bear than if you had chosen something safer, something you are not so attached to. If you had, in Frankie Burns's words, drifted into some job you don't care about.

So when the inevitable difficulties arrive, many interpret them as a sign that they are not properly aligned. That their compass is off. And because of the difficulty, they give up on the dream. Often, in my experience, this happens not at the beginning, when hope is cheap, but in the long grey middle, when the gap between the vision and the reality is at its widest. Hansard longed for a revelation to carry him during a low point.

Pursuing a career that is purposeful and meaningful should be understood as a choice for strong emotions, both high and low. Suffering and joy. Doubt and belief. Fragility and strength. Failure and success.

Nietzsche understood this trade. "If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how." Notice what the line does not say. It does not say the why removes the how. It says the why makes the how bearable. The difficulty is assumed. The meaning is what lets you carry it.

We can take all this inner and outer turmoil if the dream is strong enough, if it is something that will carry us on a daily basis. Because make no mistake: choosing meaning leads to more inner turmoil, not less. When we are not engaged in what we are doing, no emotions are evoked at all. We are flat. Like a heart rate monitor that has levelled out.

Many of us choose, based on fear, for this idea of balance. To avoid stress. Somewhere along the way we quietly equated stress with inner fluctuation, as if any strong feeling were a threat to be managed. Of course there is a version of inner turmoil that is genuinely damaging to our health, physical and mental. But making a career choice on the basis that you want to feel relaxed inside the whole time does not marry up with following your passion.

And those strong, healthy emotions, if we can manage them and hold on to them, are precisely what make us feel alive, and are therefore conducive to good mental health. Without them we can, like a plant without sun and water, wither away.

It was Viktor Frankl, who survived the camps and quoted that same line of Nietzsche's to make sense of what he saw there, who put it most plainly in Man's Search for Meaning:

"Man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health."

This is the juice of life.

But in choosing it, we will suffer. One way this suffering shows up is that our "why" will ask of us "hows" we didn't expect and perhaps don't want. Take me writing articles. I have spent years wrestling with the push to publish online. It felt far too exposing. I've lost count of the number of times, in my own coaching sessions, I came back to the realisation that this was the only way forward. But would I do it? Hell no. I had elaborate reasons in my head why it wasn't the right thing to do. Loads of excuses.

At the times it all felt too much, my vision looked grey, something off in the distance, far out of reach. It is only when I re-engage with the uncomfortable yet alive-feeling "how" that the colour returns.

And I suppose that's my message. Perhaps you have a dream you have not yet fully committed to, or have quietly given up on. A dream that right now feels fanciful and distant, a childish thing. Why not give it some energy? Do something, no matter how small, just to keep it alive. Even if that small thing feels scary. Especially if it feels scary. You may find, as I have, that despite the trials and tribulations, your mental health benefits.

There does seem to be something in all of us pulling us in a certain direction, like a child tugging gently on our trousers, saying "come over here, come and see." Just remember what you are signing up for if you heed it.

Frankie Burns saw it in a thirteen-year-old in detention. Glen Hansard heeded it for over forty years, low points and all. Sometimes we need a revelation. Sometimes the revelation is simply that the difficulty was part of the deal all along.

I wonder who else has heeded that pull in their own life, and how it played out. I'd love you to share it.