Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Losing Our Way")

May 5—11, 2024 | THIS WEEK: “Losing Our Way”

May 05, 2024

This is a powerful opening line, and it is all the more impressive because “hooks” like this generally come from novels, not personal growth/self-discovery books. The first sentence is also the book’s entire first paragraph, thereby ensuring maximum impact.

In the book’s second paragraph, Millman continued with a poignant description of the inner turmoil and psychic pain that can result from losing our way in life:

“Linda and I were married on a Sunday in the spring of 1967, during my senior year at U.C. Berkeley. After a special dinner, we spent our brief honeymoon in a Berkeley hotel. I remember waking before dawn, unaccountably depressed. With the world still cloaked in darkness, I slipped out from under the rumpled covers and stepped softly out onto the balcony so as not to disturb Linda. As soon as I closed the sliding glass door, my chest began to heave and the tears came. I could not understand why I felt so sad, except for a troubling intuition that I had forgotten something important, and that my life had somehow gone awry.”

For nearly 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

On May 9, 1981, this man died at age 72 (of a sudden heart attack) at his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York. The next day, a New York Times obituary reported that Ernest Hemingway had been asked a few decades earlier to name the best American writers of the era. He quickly answered “Faulkner,” and then, after a pause, mentioned this week’s Mystery Man.

At his death, he was one of America’s most celebrated writers, best known for The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), a National Book Award winner, and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). Both books were adapted into popular films. His novels and short stories so powerfully portrayed the lives of drunks, junkies, gamblers, prostitutes, street hustlers, and other representatives of society’s underclass that critic Leslie Fielder called him “The bard of the stumblebum.”

About A Walk on the Wild Side, he wrote:

Who is this person? (Answer below)

Have You Ever “Lost Your Way” in Life?

When people lose their way in life, they often don't even know they’re lost until things explode in their faces—or implode in their souls. In this week’s Great Opening Lines feature, Dan Millman perfectly captured the emotional distress that accompanies what might be called “a life adrift.”

One of the history’s most famous stories about losing one’s way involves John Newton (1725-1807), a former Royal Navy seaman who not only became a heavy investor in the slave trade, he captained three separate slave ships in the 1750s. A historically non-religious man, he converted to Christianity after retiring from his naval career, became a Church of England cleric, and formally renounced his work as a slave trafficker. In the last decades of his life, he sought redemption by becoming a leading figure in what was known as the abolitionist movement.

In 1788, more than thirty years after retiring from his naval career, Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade. In the pamphlet, after formally apologizing for “a confession which comes too late,” he went on to write:

“It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”

Newton is now best known as the author of “Amazing Grace,” one of Christianity’s most famous hymns. Written in 1772, but first published in 1779, the opening stanza is a perfect illustration of this week’s theme:

I also have a “losing my way” story. When I arrived at the University of North Dakota in the fall of 1960, I was about as serious and singleminded as an 18-year-old college freshman could be. After a brush with the law two years earlier (for that story, go here), I was “back on track,” and my goal in life was to become a psychologist.

After a first semester that included Abnormal Psychology (a course not normally open to freshman) and Beginning Russian, I was most pleased to end up with a 4.0 GPA. At the beginning of my second semester, I joined a fraternity and—well, you probably already know where the story is going. The short version is that I was quickly seduced by the Joe College life style, and over the next two years, my grades steadily drifted downward.

As I began my junior year, I was a BMOC (a 1960s term for “Big Man on Campus”). I was president of my fraternity, vice-president of the Student Senate, and a member of the prestigious Blue Key service fraternity. I was also an officer in Golden Feather, an exclusive campus pep club that had the enviable task of selecting cheerleaders for the university’s athletic teams. In many ways, it looked like I had it all together, but on the inside, I felt empty, as if I had no core. One thing was becoming very clear, though; the path I’d been walking down was taking me to a place I did not want to go.

I’m not exactly sure what precipitated the decision, but I impulsively—and, in hindsight, somewhat ungracefully—resigned from all of the organizations that had been so important to me over the past two years. My fraternity brothers and most of my other classmates viewed my decision not as an attempt to find myself, but as a personal rejection of them. As a result, I quickly became persona non grata all over campus.

Feeling all alone in the world and totally unsure about my next steps, I moved into a dark and dingy off-campus apartment that perfectly matched what I was feeling on the inside. It was the lowest period of my life, and, at the time, I probably would have said I was in the middle of a clinical depression.

With the help of a psychologist at the college Counseling Center, I learned that a more accurate term for what I was experiencing was an identity crisis. The principle challenge for someone with this condition is to find a sense of purpose or meaning in life, and what quickly became apparent was that I had taken only the first step. After recognizing that I’d lost my way, I soon learned, the hardest work remained to be done.

Over the next six months, I made significant strides in building a solid psychological and philosophical foundation on which to build a more satisfying and meaningful life (for key elements of that portion of the story, go here). And, after two years of walking in an almost dreamlike haze through a lifestyle without intrinsic meaning, I was getting closer and closer to a goal Henry David Thoreau had set for himself in an 1855 journal entry:

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

How about you? Have you ever lost your way in life? If so, what was the experience like? And, after losing your way, were you able to work through the crisis by finding or creating a more authentic path for yourself? As you reflect on these questions, I hope this week’s compilation of quotations will assist you in your reflections:

What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. — Margaret Atwood
So often when the obstacles in your path can’t be overcome, it’s not your path. — Robert Brault
The descent into the depths always seems to precede the ascent. — Carl Jung
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly. — Søren Kierkegaard
We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen. — Thomas Merton
But if a man happens to find himself…then he has found a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life. — James Michener
All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. Pablo Neruda
By losing your goal—you have lost your way, too! — Friedrich Nietzsche
I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them. — Boris Pasternak
In a dark time, the eye begins to see. — Theodore Roethke