What is the role of departure in conversation? It seems it must be great, must at least not be ignored. It could be that if we do not disengage here, we may miss engaging there in a new way. It could happen as running out of steam, but if the conversation be good, it calls for a good ending.
What makes the ending good? It invites a going forth. Perhaps it invites a returning—as a new person. I think of the Hero’s Journey cycle as informing this: going forth, meeting danger, being—with one’s own innate resources—transformed by meeting danger into a new person, who then returns to the community, changed, changing, to the larger task of meeting anew.
We are whole yet incomplete. Our task is to complete. Once we move toward complete, we find other ways to complete. Changing our community, contributing to its change, takes courage and energy that no one of us possesses. Energy is not a thing to possess, but a flow to invite, receive. So we use our energy to ignite and invite others’. It takes courage to invite it, faith to know it is there in most people, some nearer the surface, some buried deeper, most hidden. Departure is not only a new beginning; it is an arbitrarily named place on the spiral.
Departure might be a call to reflect. Departure might be a place to take a deep breath and a rest. Is departure the in-breath, the out-breath, or the small still space between? Might departure be more than all this?
:- Doug.
