Heroic

My wife told me that I was morose. Of course, that's not the only word she'd use to describe me, but it is true. I'm no Lord Byron or Edgar Allen Poe, but I reckon that I am something of a melancoliac.

Melancoliac. I think this word has a charm much more compelling than "Manic-Depressive." Besides, I don't deal in psycho-social diagnosis. I leave all of that tripe to psychologists and social-workers. I deal, instead, in sublime romance.

How lofty that sounds! And yet, it seems the heroic aspect of life lies dormant in all things.

When I was a child (read: yesterday), I use to fantasize about the heroic life. What would it be like, I wondered, to square off against a Foe with everything at risk? I imagined myself with an athletic body and supernatural abilities facing a worthy Enemy... Melodrama of the mind. A desire to rise above the mundane. To believe that "I" am "more" than this regular old self, living and breathing a regular life.

As a hospital chaplain, one could argue my life is heroic, but I resist such attempts. The ethics of what occurs there is not always clear, and there is no room at all for ego. Frankly, I like ego.

Emerson once wrote about an experience in "nature" wherein "all mean egotism vanishes." I think that ultimately this is heroic, but how to live without this grasping "I" is surely beyond my means. The mystics speak of joining with God, whatever God is, and there the ego is merged with Something qualitatively greater. We are invited by the mystics to join them in this sacred ocean, to immerse ourselves into pure... what? Ineffability? Bliss? Being/Non-Being?

What a lure it is. The ultimate journey of the soul... not to find, but to lose one's self. Would that I had better courage and will for such a loss.