We, as a human species, are standing at a crossroads. The name of this crossroads doesn't really matter. Different people will describe it differently, no matter what the signposts say. What DOES matter is the fact that each and everyone of us, now more than ever, is facing a monumental choice -- and that choice has a lot to do with the kind of lives we want to lead.

Some people call the crossroads the intersection of Light and Dark. Some call it the crossroads of Right and Wrong. Others, call it Life and Death or any other pair of words that give shape to the polarity of our lives. But no matter what words we use to describe where we stand, a choice is definitely before us and a choice needs to be made.

Heroes in all stories face this same choice. Do they take the high road or the low? Do they accept help from a stranger or go it alone? Do they face the beast head on or sneak out the back? That's what makes stories interesting. The intrigue. The unknown. The conflicts navigated by the hero and, of course, how that hero deals with the obstacles that inevitably head their ugly rear along the way.

One choice we all have, as teller of tales, is the choice between revolution and revelation, two words that sound almost exactly alike, but conjure up very different images in the mind.

Let's start with "revolution". Why is revolution a concept storytellers need to be mindful of? Because every truly great story IS a revolution -- both in the sense of revolving around a core theme and being an uprising, of sorts -- a conscious taking on of an old way of being that needs to be overthrown, enabling the hero to be saved from the burden of whatever it is that has kept him or her down and out: fear, doubt, hesitation, greed, selfishness, powerlessness, tunnel vision, assumptions, confusion, envy, or any of the other obstacles that prevent human beings from being on top of their game.

Simply put, storytellers are revolutionaries, taking on whatever systems or structures are no longer working. Being a revolutionary can be a very exciting path -- energizing, absorbing, and highly purposeful. But being a revolutionary -- pushing back against an existing order -- is only half the story. It's easy to fight against "the wrong", but it takes an entirely different mindset to live "the right".

Which is precisely why a lot of revolutionaries who end up in power don't make good leaders. They don't necessarily have what it takes to SUSTAIN their apparent breakthrough. And because they don't, they become ripe targets for the next revolution, now fighting valiantly for yet another cause.

Which brings us to the word "revelation" -- the act of revealing, the disclosing of some kind of timeless truth or wisdom. Good storytellers are not just revolutionaries. They are revelationaries, too.

What do storytellers reveal? Two things: access to feeling and the re-cognition untapped wisdom of what it means to be a fully conscious human being -- curious, awake, aware, adaptive, resilient, creative, reflective, responsive, kind, compassionate, evolving, generous, grateful and a whole lot of other words you can find in your nearest thesaurus.

That's why we tell fairy tales to our children. We want them to gain access to the wisdom they will need as they mature. And that's why we go to the moves, watch TV, or read a book. We want the experience of breakthrough, resolution, and wisdom made real -- even if the path to these noble aspirations are filled with conflict, obstacles, and angst.

You can't have one without the other. Revolution and revelation go hand in hand. If you have any doubt, all you need to do is read about the lives of some of the great souls who have walked this earth. Buddha had to leave his entitled life as a Prince and endure countless hardships as an ascetic monk before his enlightenment came. Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, too, all revolted against the existing order, but they did it in a way that brought revelation -- not only to themselves, but to countless others, too.

The "Hero's Journey" is what Joseph Campbell called it -- the path all of us are on, regardless of the name we give it.

As a storyteller, your responsibility is to increase the odds of other people going on this journey -- not only joining the storytelling revolution, but riding it as far as possible until the revelation comes.

My 2018 book on this topic
My 2015 book on the topic
Fuggedabout it! Sometimes all you need is poetry

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)

Sometimes, and I don't know how, life seems to conspire in curious ways to help me experience something I need to experience -- something not to include in a book I will never write, but because the experience, itself, in all its full glory, will serve me for the rest of my life and however many in the future are coming to me, in case you believe in that sort of thing.

But let's get back to business, shall we? The following story about the better part of a day in my life is a kind of radioactive isotope of longing implanted deep within me years ago and still radiating out -- not just for my own healing and delight, but for anyone in my general vicinity who might be open to what it is I am about to share with you.

I can't quite remember when I decided, out of the blue, to call the very Australian Ray Belcher, who, at that time in his life, was living in LA and full-time engaged as the head of Prem Rawat's production services. Ray, God bless him, always seemed, to me, to be hanging ten on the great wave of life -- some one, over the years, who I had collaborated with here and there and I thought (as I sometimes do), that it would be fun for the two of us to meet for lunch.

"Yo Ray," I said, dialing his number. "It's Mitch here, bro. I'm in LA. How about we find some time to go to lunch today?"

"Perfect timing, mate. This is your lucky day. Prem is scheduled to come to the office today for a meeting. Why don't you stop by? We can go to lunch before and then I can see if I can get you in."

What the meeting was about didn't matter in the least to me. After 45 years of bathing in the vibe around this man, he could read the phone book for all I cared. In Swahili. It really didn't matter to me what the content of the meeting was about. Just like it doesn't matter if it's robins, starlings, or sparrows in the trees overhead when I go for a walk. Birdsong, baby, birdsong and wings!

I got there as fast as I could and had the tuna on rye. Ray had the Turkey and Swiss. Both of us had celebrational cappuccinos and some buoyancy. At moments like this, however, food doesn't really matter all tha much, so we paid the bill and hightailed it back to the office.

"Hey Mitch," exclaimed Ray, "go ahead and put your jacket on a chair in the meeting room, then take a seat in the room just on the other side of the wall. All I have to do is put your name on the list. That's it. Then I'll come back and get you when it's time."

Cool. Super cool. Beyond Celsius and Fahernheit versions of cool. Happy day. Most happy, happy, Red Sea parting day. So I took a seat, as requested, and sat. There was one other person in the room, a woman about my age who was also waiting for Ray to come and tell her it was time to take her seat in the other room.

This wasn't the time for small talk. Neither of us really cared where the other one lived, what we did for a living, or what we thought of LA. None of it mattered here in the room next to the room where Prem would soon be speaking.

"How fortunate am I!" I thought. "I travel 3,000 miles across the country, randomly call Ray for lunch, and now, any minute now I'm going to find myself in a room with my favorite person in the whole world."

Can I get a witness, brothers and sisters? Can I get an amen?

And then, the door opens. It's Ray. I can tell by the way he approached me that the news wasn't good.

"Hey Mitch," Ray began, with as much compassion as he could muster. "I put your name on the list, but I just found out this is a meeting only for the people on the production team. Sorry mate. Just sit tight. I'll come and get you when the meeting's over.

In the Jewish tradition, there's a phrase for this kind of phenomenon: "Oy vey!"

In the Buddhist tradition, if you listed just right, you could have heard the sound of one hand clapping.

And so it was. And so I sat. Me and the woman of approximately the same age, sitting next to the room where Prem would be speaking. Yes, we could hear, through the wall, the rise and fall of his voice, and a lot of laughter, but not his words -- and yet, somehow, someway, even in this moment when disappointment could have easily had its way with me, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time -- the poet in me penless, the dancer without shoes.

There was nothing to do but BE and listen as carefully as I could through the wall, hoping to catch a word or two or three.

Was there a party I hadn't been invited to? No. Absolutely not. The party I wanted to attend was attending to me, castle as it was of a thousand rooms and me in one of them. Yes, there was a wall. Yes, I could see it. And yes, there were other people not more than 20 feet away with a seemingly a better seat than mine, but I had exactly what I needed -- the welling up of longing in my soul, the aspiration of my heart, the invisible quivering of love.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:26 AM | Comments (0)

"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." - Franz Kafka

"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age." - Sophia Loren

"My face carries all my memories. Why would I erase them?" - Diane Von Furstenberg

"If you are pining for youth I think it produces a stereotypical old man because you only live in memory, you live in a place that doesn't exist. Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been." - David Bowie

"As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it." - Margaret Deland

"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all things that make you want to live to be a hundred." - Woody Allen

"There are six myths about old age: 1. That it's a disease, a disaster. 2. That we are mindless. 3. That we are sexless. 4. That we are useless. 5. That we are powerless. 6. That we are all alike." - Maggie Kuhn

"When it comes to aging, we're held to a different standard than men. Some guy said to me: 'Don't you think you're too old to sing rock n' roll?' I said: 'You'd better check with Mick Jagger'". - Cher

"Aging is not 'lost youth', but a new stage of opportunity and strength." - Betty Friedan

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. - Samuel Ullman

"When you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life." - Warren Buffett

"We live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we are not young, and we're not glowing, and we're not hot, that we don't matter. I refuse to let a system or a culture or a distorted view of reality tell me that I don't matter. I know that only by owning who and what you are can you start to step into the fullness of life. Every year should be teaching us all something valuable. Whether you get the lesson is really up to you.' - Oprah Winfrey

"We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw

"Don't try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won't live long enough to find out about, but I'm still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, 'I'm going to be 30 -- oh, what am I going to do?' Well, use that decade! Use them all!" - Betty White

"The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"What helps with aging is serious cognition -- thinking and understanding. You have to truly grasp that everybody ages. Everybody dies. There is no turning back the clock. So the question in life becomes: What are you going to do while you're here?" - Goldie Hawn

"With aging, you earn the right to be loyal to yourself." - Francis McDormand

"The thing about aging is all your old lovers, pretty much if they were really friends, become your family. It's great. You have those terrible feelings of possessiveness and uncertainty go out the window. You have what you shared. You know you would help each other in times of trouble no matter what." - Gloria Steinhem

"I don't feel old or used up, and I don't have time to waste thinking about aging, because I live only for my cause." - Brigitte Bardot

"Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging." - Maya Angelou

"The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected." - Robert Frost

"And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!" - Audrey Hepburn

"Wisdom comes with winters." - Oscar Wilde

"The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude." - Gabriel Garcia Marque

"Today I am 65 years old. I still look good. I appreciate and enjoy my age. A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it. You still bring to bear all your prior experience, but you are riding on another level. It's completely liberating." - Nikki Giovanni

"I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don't have to." - Albert Einstein

"You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream." - C.S. Lewis

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm." - H.D. Thoreau

"Today is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll even be again." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Those who love deeply never grow old. They may die of old age, but they die young." - Ben Franklin

Last photo: Cristian Newman

Glorious Broads

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)