This is part of a series that focuses on the stories we tell and how the telling itself gives shape to our lives. It’s called Power of the Storyteller.
I: Shackleton
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton sailed the Endurance to Antarctica with a crew of 27 men, 69 dogs, and a cat named Mrs. Chippy. His goal was to reach the South Pole with five other men, and continue his voyage across the Antarctic continent to be picked up by another ship. Since Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole in 1911, Shackleton saw this quest as the only great one remaining to him.
In January 1915, the Endurance became frozen in an ice floe. The crew tried to break free but could not. Rather, the ship remained trapped in ice, drifting slowly, all through the Antarctic winter. The sunlight dwindled to minutes a day. Shackleton tried to rouse flagging spirits with fitness training, discipline, and even theatrical performances. The ship remained stuck.
I think of our experience today and see parallels with this crew on the Endurance. It often feels like our ship is stuck. Politically, our country is as divided as anytime in the last fifty years. Perhaps longer. Our major parties have nominated two geriatric men in a reboot of the election of 2020. Our politics feels, if anything, exhausted, disoriented, and indignant.
And I think our politics is a reflection of our society.
We are exhausted. Writer and work-expert Cal Newport wrote last December that 2023 was the “year of exhaustion.” The Great Resignation and quiet quitting preceded it. Now, over 60% of Gen Z and millennials report feeling tired even after a good night of sleep. Our youngest are fatigued from crisis after crisis, from searching for how to make work meaningful, and they can only point at their mental health and say, “Help.” Are older generations significantly different?
We are disoriented. In the 1920s and 1940s, upwards of 60% of Americans went to the movies weekly (a dip in the ‘30s occurred with the Great Depression). This isn’t to say how great Hollywood was in that era, but that we had common cultural experiences and language. Now, our culture is fragmented. We lack the common experiences that create connection, whether quoting movies that everyone has seen or interpreting events with a common language. Everything has another angle, everyone has an uncle who believes it’s a conspiracy, and no common institution that can orient us to truth, let alone purpose.
We are indignant. In the absence of commonality, we form tribes. Devotion to these tribes strengthens when they create enemies. Not only this, but the creation of enemies gives us someone or something to get indignant about – which is a cheap substitute for energy (adrenaline or epinephrine kicks in, heart rate increases, muscles get greater blood flow and access to glucose) and a cheap substitute for orientation. Both bind the indignant to a tribe and to the purpose of defeating an enemy.
II: Two Stories
Many of these activities simply have the appearance of going somewhere. Shifting jobs or quiet quitting does not solve the root problem of our exhaustion. Joining a tribe may give greater orientation, but it does not fix our broader culture – for it often creates enemies and the false promise of indignation.
And politically, we all claim that we are in a late capitalist age, and Marxism has been defeated, but no one has a vision of what comes next. But our stories, whether individual or corporate, demand a future. They demand some sort of vision.
I believe our culture vision of the future has diminished into one that I’ll simply call winning.
Winning seems to be our great goal now. Consider how often polls are reported upon. These are snapshots of the horse race that will be run in November (really, over a series of weeks due to early voting), nothing more. They are prognostications. Polls are obsessions with the future without any say in what is good or bad – other than whether your tribe is winning or losing. This is life within a tribe of being right, without challenge. A culture of winning is obsessed with being right and being ahead, rather than with finding truth and the common good.
The culture of winning seeks success. Our Great Men are those who have succeeded financially – Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates. What does it say that we know little of these men’s lives or why they met with such financial success? What does it say that no women are on this list?
And a culture of winning seeks comfort, ease, and accumulation. We are told that technology and technique will solve our problems – we can manage them away – and experience the life of our dreams. We know deep down that this isn’t true, but that doesn’t stop us from pursuing such a life – for it’s what everyone else is not only pursuing, but showing. Look at social media and see lives of travel, insight, growth, and success upon success.
A culture of winning creates win/lose outcomes. It’s a culture void of complexity and nuance.
What if there’s another story, one not about winning and its trappings of success, comfort, and accumulation? What if our other story is less about winning and more about expecting conflict and even embracing it?
This other story would focus on the process rather than the outcome. It would ask what we’re really after. In classic story terms, it matches the structure of the quest.
A quest is a search for something, but not a selfish search. It is a search for something so that order can be restored for the entire community. Jason needs the golden fleece to set the rightful king in place. Frodo must get rid of the ring to defeat the evil threatening the land. A quest is on behalf of a larger community. The quest as a structure of our stories may better cure our present malaise, for it assumes three key realities:
We will have conflict. The hero or heroine in a quest knows conflict will arrive – and the conflict is the point. It’s through the conflict that our heroine experiences growth, proves herself, and lives out her purpose. What if we cannot live out our purposes on earth without conflict? Such an idea would be an invitation to choose carefully our conflicts, and to know that whatever we are trying to do will be difficult. It does not assume ease and comfort, but engages in the difficult and significant task.
We will have surprises. This is part of the quest. A life of abundance hates surprises, for they disrupt equilibrium. A life on a quest accepts them and becomes curious about why they are there. For, the surprise will be a chance to grow and offer new opportunities. As mountain climber and later founder of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard writes, “It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.”
We seek the healing of the community. This is not a life of indignation, but one that seeks something greater. In The Odyssey, Odysseus seeks to return to his home to set things right and rule properly. Without his presence, we see his family and land are broken and fractured. His return brings a renewed order.
It would do us well to regain the language of the quest in our imagination. The quest motif provides the greatest works of ancient Greek and Roman culture – The Odyssey and The Aeneid. It provides the most enduring image of Protestant thought in Pilgrim’s Progress. Catholicism has its own version of quests with pilgrimages, where the journey is as important as the destination. Lord of the Rings essentially launched an entire literary genre. Something in us is wired for the quest.
All of these stories, too, allow for nuance and complexity, for possibility in the others we meet.
III: A World Gone Mad
After the long winter on the Endurance, Shackleton’s ship was not loosed by the ice. Rather, the breakup of the ice in spring tore the ship apart. The men camped on an ice floe. They ate seals. The floe drifted and became warmer in the summer; the men sank to their knees. All thoughts of the great expedition were abandoned; they only wanted to survive.
They took lifeboats and landed on an uninhabited island. There, most of the men remained while Shackleton and a few others sailed on to get help. It took an improbable ocean voyage for Shackleton to reach civilization, and four attempts before he could rescue the reminder of his men at the end of August – after another winter at the bottom of the world.
We remember Shackleton now less as a great explorer and more as a great survivor and leader of others despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He was on a quest, ready for conflict, surprises, and seeking the good of his community.
How can you see your life as a quest? How can you take what we learn from stories and lay it on your own life – for your own good and that of those near you?
The quest asks what you ultimately seek – and if winning or accumulation is the answer, you are not on a quest. If healing is part of the answer, and the story is big enough to incorporate conflict and even seek healthy conflict, you may just be living such a quest.
The currents of culture push toward winning. As Shackleton had left for his journey in late summer of 1914, a war in Europe had just broken out. It turned out to be World War I. After months on the ice on his own quest, fighting for the lives of his men and his own, he found the manager of a whaling station as he returned to civilization. He remembered events as he left. It was now two years later, so he asked, “Tell me, when was the war over?”
“The war is not over,” replied the manager of the whaling station. “Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad.”
The world wants to win. What if our imaginations were tuned to something different?
Good thoughts, Gabe, and I love the conclusion!