"Where you stumble and fall, there you discover the gold"

The title of this post comes from a Joseph Campbell quote. I would like to elaborate on it. I’ve had some life experiences in the last year that make this quote come to life for me, and I want to share.

I’ll make my point with a common life example that I’m sure we can all relate to. Say you’re in your room and you’re getting ready to go to work. You get dressed, you comb your hair, and you begin to fill your pockets with your keys, wallet, loose change, and your chapstick. Upon reaching for your chapstick, however, you knock it over and it rolls off your nightstand, falling between the nightstand and the wall…

Now, of course chapstick itself isn’t that important here. Maybe you spill wine on the carpet. Maybe you get halfway to your car and remember you forgot something important. Maybe you’re carrying one too many dishes to the sink and one falls and breaks. Maybe you pop a string when playing your guitar at a crucial moment.

What is important is the response given in response to any such occurrence. Now in my experience of life, most people will react to any of those above situations with something like “!!!!!” “ARGGH!!” “NOOO!” or more likely, any one (or many) curse words strung together. But its not just what we say verbally – it is the heated emotion of something like HATE or ANGER or DISGUST that flows through us when something doesn’t go our way. In my experience, most people seem to hang on to such negative emotions, and these emotions blind them to all else. So while one is retrieving the chapstick (or cleaning up the wine or sweeping up the dishes or whatever), they’re usually so upset and so angry and so concentrated on being mad that, even if for just one minute, nothing else matters.

Blind to anything the world might be offering them for that one moment.

But what if some treasure is waiting for us… calling our name even, in this moment in which our attention is consumed with frustration?

What if in bending down to pick up your chapstick, you catch a glimpse of something under your bed that sparks into a memory a treasured idea you had forgotten? What if in cleaning up spilled wine, the pattern of the wine spill illuminates your thinking on an issue that has confused you for months? What if in going back inside to grab what you have forgotten you have a flashback to a memory that will change your life forever?

Would any of these sudden insights or ideas or recollections happen when your mind is full of anger at the world not being “the way it should be?” In most cases, I think no.

For me, this quote very closely parallel’s Campbell’s assertion that we are to affirm life just the way it is, not the way we think it ought to be for us. Things happen, and we might often call these things “bad.” We might drop things behind our nightstands. We might spill our drinks. We might get cut off while merging. We might hit red lights on the way to work. These thingswill never go away. But what can go away is the negative attitude we bring with us into such events. Are we going to curse the sudden twists of fate that come our way, or welcome them with open arms?

I have long questioned what it is I have faith in, if anything, and I would answer with this: that whatever life throws my way, I have faith that there exists a nourishing, fulfilling, and wholly affirming experience of being alive that is mine to behold if only I am able to see it.
I'd like to close with an excerpt from a Campbell interview where this very theme is explored:

TOMS: So often we see those dark places as huge problems rather than as opportunities. What does mythology have to say about that?

CAMPBELL: Well, mythology tells us that where you stumble, there your treasure is. There are so many examples. One that comes to mind is in The Arabian Nights. Someone is plowing a field, and his plow gets caught. He digs down to see what it is and discovers a ring of some kind. When he hoists the ring, he finds a cave with all of the jewels in it. And so it is in our own psyche; our psyche is the cave with all the jewels in it, and it's the fact that we're not letting their energies move us that brings us up short. The world is a match for us and we're a match for the world. And where it seems most challenging lies the greatest invitation to find deeper and greater powers in ourselves.

So when we do stumble while walking through the forest adventurous, let us not be filled with rage at the root that caught our boot. Let us hit the ground with excitement at the unexpected opportunity that was just tossed our way. May we be filled with wide-eyed wonder, knowing that the gold that awaits us may just be a moment away from flowing into our world.