The Hero’s Journey

Christos summoned his best English.

"Where is the woman?" he asked. "She is gone?" and made a sign of an airplane taking off.

"Yes, she went back to America," I said – taking his question to be about Michelle.

"No woman, no trouble!" said the Greek Bob Marley laughing and clapping me on the shoulder.

I laughed  - not so much about what Christos said, but that he was saying it and in the clearest, most eloquent English I have ever heard from him.

Christos is the warm and caring man who operates Cafe Mostra in front of my house. He is a series of contradictions: A man who operates a cafe catering to foreigners who speaks the least English of anyone I deal with on the island. A man who showed me deep compassion last year when he learned about my divorce – was very happy for me this year when I showed up with Michelle – and then seems just as happy to have her leave. I got the feeling his sentiment came less from any evaluation of Michelle – because their communication was minimal – but from a man who has been married presumably 50ish years. 

Christos has taken to being the Greek father I never had who I can't really talk to anyway. Over time he has shown me how to care for my lawn and let me know I wasn't doing it well enough; expressed concern about my throw-rug when it arrived lest it be placed against a wall or corner which could cause the locally made stone tile to buckle (that took his sons to translate); called the former owner to check on me when I was away for a few days last summer returning the kids to Emily; and had a heart-to-heart with me about my divorce in which he was very warm and encouraging  - although I still can't explain the conversation because we both just used our own languages.

Christos is invariably kind and helpful to almost everyone and is fond of my mom and kids. In fact, after telling me life is easier without a woman, he inquired about the "babies" and when they were coming. I told him next week. I'm not sure if he understood exactly when – but he knows it's soon and he was happy about it. As with most Patmians, I score higher with kids than with a girlfriend. Last year when I didn't have internet at home for a good portion of the summer, the kids often took their iPads to Cafe Mostra for their daily screen time where Christos sometimes slipped them beverages I don't allow – like Coke or orange soda. 

Starting yesterday, my focus has shifted from fun around the island to productivity. During this week between Michelle and my mom, followed by my kids I realize I have a lot to do and the beach won't be fun with things hanging over my head. While a lot of what I need to do is online and involves buckling down at my laptop, some tasks are physical: finishing cleaning the barbecue grates, exchanging the blender Michelle never used for the iron my mom will use, disinfecting the beach chairs I'm pretty sure some stray cat sprayed, and making sure Hassan the cement and plaster guy finished the repair to the bathroom wall (he filled the hole yesterday, but needs to come back for the painting/finishing work). 

So for today, I'm keeping myself grounded in-town. If I do well, maybe tomorrow I get paroled to work at the cafe at Agriolivadi beach.

Among my online tasks is completing my first blog post for 3 Quarks Daily, an academically-oriented site self-described as focused on "Science Arts Philosophy Politics Literature". My friend Leanne has been writing for them for years on Chinese and Japanese culture, art and literature and recommended I apply when they were recently taking on new Monday columnists. She recommended doing something that will serve me on other projects and since I have been working on a book related to Singapore, I pitched "Lessons From Singapore" as a monthly column for which I was accepted. 

So now, for the first time in decades, I have a regular column in a somewhat professional publication with its own audience. Better yet, I can use the opportunity to help me with other projects – exploring ideas, playing around with wording, forcing me to do research on a regular timeline, etc. 

Oddly enough, my first post/column will be an adaptation of one of my old blog posts from 2011 when Emily and I were in Singapore. Thankfully-ish my writing style hasn't changed dramatically from then to now. In fact, in perusing some of the old blogs yesterday I was struck by the conciseness of a lot of them. That's one thing about writing everyday for a year – it sharpens you. It certainly made me feel like my 2024-self could stand to remember a bit more of how my 2011-self wrote.

Sadly, looking at those old blogs also made me realize Christos isn't altogether right – much as I wish he was. The 2010-2011 Our First Year Everywhere blog was generally so happy and full of hope. At 32, I was a newlywed traveling the world with my beautiful new wife. For the most part, life was a carefree adventure. And I got to write everyday – not really having a vision for the blog when we started our year in July 2010 in Mediterranean Turkey, but finding a format, voice and rhythm within about a month. In an unexpected way, the blog became our companion – Emily contributing photos – and it safeguarded our story. I always believed that year of travel was an amazing foundation for our marriage and a set of memories we would forever cherish.

Now – as much as I want otherwise – I look at those blog posts and cry. 

My higher-level self – the mature voice that helps others – says that those memories don't have to be tainted by the divorce. They are what they are – no one can take away that time and its meaning. I can enjoy them still because the later turn in my story with Emily hadn't happened yet. The joy of 2010-2011 can stand.

Only that's not how I feel at this time.

Maybe it's just that I haven't fully grieved. The loss of a marriage is indeed a death and we go through the stages of grief. At the beginning of the divorce, there was little time to think about how I felt about my relationship with Emily. I was in what my friend Alex calls Warrior Mode. There were big life-changing decisions, arguments, lawyers, arrangements, transitions, the kids… things for which you can't take your eye off the ball. There was a lot of anger, anxiety and fear – but little of it related to what the last 14 years had meant. Those feelings seemed like something between a luxury and an undeserved waste of time. At that time, how could I give Emily the satisfaction of my being pained over the loss of us? How could I put myself through that when I felt she didn't deserve my tears? She had taken enough of those. 

Since the divorce was finalized in May, I have taken off the armor and given my warrior-self leave. If all goes well, I may discharge him to reserve duty.

Emily left our relationship a pretty different person that I found her – so when I see her, I don't have a lot of softness or pining for how things were. It feels like the person I loved moved out of her body. But on the pages of the old blog, I see her and us. If I can say anything about my 2010-2011 self it was that he did a good job of capturing the world in which he walked looking at it through his most positive lenses (except maybe in Nepal – although even that's up for discussion). He adored his wife and their journey. When I read his work, I feel both happy for those experiences and their beauty – and robbed.

Of course, that's the part I'm trying to negotiate with myself. I've noticed humans have the tendency to evaluate the entire story based on the ending. the saying "All's well that ends well" is a fundamental truth to our psyches. We generally don't remember how valiantly people fought or whether their cause may have been the more righteous. If they lose, for the most part history covers that over. Outside of France, Napoleon isn't remembered as a populist who created property rights for peasants and a fair code of law that endures to this day – but as a despot who instigated more than a decade of war across multiple continents. Had he taken Moscow, would we think the same of him?

When we think of The Jeffersons do we think of the show that dared to juxtaposition upwardly mobile black family on Park Avenue that used the actual "N word" in its pilot episode and explored the social issues of the day – or do we think of the fun, silly, family-friendly sitcom it ultimately became?

Can I find a way not to let the end of the story define the beginning and middle? Can I look back and feel the joy of the time instead of today's pain? Or if I can't today, will that come when my heart is more healed?

I may be fighting an uphill battle. While I'm neither a psychologist nor a literary scholar – I like to play both on TV. My faux expertise tells me our impulse to evaluate the entire story by its end is deeply tied into our archetypal craving for redemption. Odysseus pays for his hubris through his long adventures and misadventures until he returns home physically blind, but possessing new sight. He can now see all the things he failed to before and make better choices that redeem his character. Therefore, we can rightly say Odysseus was our hero. He may not have always been perfect, but he was right in the end. 

As Joseph Campbell taught us, the epic story archetype is the most universal across cultures and time. The human need for growth, transformation and redemption runs deep. How can we live with our flaws and shortcomings if there isn't hope that as we go along, we can learn, improve, grow and by the end of our stories redeem ourselves? In the end, isn't it the person we become that counts? Because we all falter along the way.

I don't have answers yet. Just tears where I wish there were none and a blog I try not to look at more than I have to when I once enjoyed it so much. I also have this blog and a column on someone else's. I have a house on Patmos, a bathroom wall with no hole, friends, family, my kids, yoga. Michelle has entered my life. So there's Hope.

One thing I know about grief is it's not linear. When we face a loss, we don't usually stop, grieve tremendously and completely and then move on like a murder of crows who have a brief funeral for a fallen companion and then move on with their lives. Grief comes in fits and bursts – sometimes sneaking up on us when we least expect it. Maybe at a holiday or special moment. Maybe when we see a familiar object, hear a certain sound or smell something we associate with the person we've lost. Sometimes a stray thought can take us down. Our pain doesn't follow a particular pattern or schedule.

All of that said, maybe I'm reading the story wrong. Going back to Joseph Campbell and the epic… maybe the mistake is looking at my marriage as the tale when really the story is my entire life. I believed Emily would be part of all the chapters after meeting her, but it turns out she was an important part of certain ones. The hero (me in this case) has not yet come full circle – the journey is not yet complete – and redemption is still very possibly ahead