It was the final night of the week-long residential program at The Monroe Institute called Heartlines, early last month. We were sitting in circle, nearly 20 of us, going around saying whatever came to us. I had thought of an analogy to what we were doing there, and so I shared it. I recreate it here, more or less.
Last year’s professional division meeting had felt like a meeting of an Indian tribe, an extended family that would separate but could expect to re-gather periodically. Heartlines felt more like being part of a wagon train.
Starting in the 1840s, people began to walk or ride 1500 or 2000 miles from the middle west across the plains to the ocean, ending in California or Oregon. They would begin as soon as the ice broke up on the rivers, and continue week after week, till nearly autumn. Some rode horses, some rode wagons, some walked, some, we are told, even pushed wheelbarrows all that way.
All along the way, the members of the train relied upon each other. Some may have been rich, some poor, and their backgrounds may have been wildly different, but for the duration of the trip they were part of one living thing, and they depended upon each other and looked out for each other.
The trip was an adventure, and adventures aren’t necessarily fun, and aren’t necessarily comfortable, and not especially safe. Westerners used to be fond of saying of themselves that “the timid never started and the weak died upon the way.” Many died. Some turned back. And even of those who made it to Oregon or California, many never saw each other again.
But in the meantime, for that one short period, they had joined in something special, something that marked them, changed them. Surely they could never forget such a journey. A Steinbeck story, “The Leader of the People,” in his novel The Red Pony, captures something of that.
It struck me that our Monroe programs have something of that quality too. We come together from different backgrounds, we quickly learn to appreciate and then to cherish each other, we help each break new ground, and all the time we know that at the end of the journey we will separate, and many of us will never again see each other in the flesh — but no matter how things come out, we will have shared in the journey, and been changed by it.
And isn’t it the same with life? My love to you, friends.
Frank