Can't Start a Fire Without a Spark

Reconnecting to our own personal myth and the timeless hope of Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark"

At the point in my life (and in our history) where self-care is no longer something that improves the quality of my life but merely makes it sustainable, my morning walks are like an active prayer. Let me keep going. Let me be able to hold what I need to, to help who I can, to not give in to nihilism as my country slides into fascism. I watch the bunnies and the bees, I look at the flowers and the cloudscapes. I listen to music.

When the first few notes of Dancing In the Dark hit my ears—

I get up in the evening
And I ain't got nothing to say
I come home in the morning
I go to bed feeling the same way

I felt a swirl of wild despair in my chest, as I always do, at the pain of these lines, the scrape of his voice, the staccato shout of Feeling! The! Same! Way!

I ain't nothing but tired
Man, I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey there, baby
I could use just a little help—

There’s something in these lyrics that echoes the brutal, boring tediousness of human experience— what Buddhists call “dukkha,” the dis-ease, the meaninglessness of our daily lives. Yeah, on one level, Bruce is looking for a “little love reaction”— but it’s also about the soul’s cry for meaning, for purpose, for that spark that we all need to keep going in the face of suffering.

Right now, I’m very, very fortunate. I’m in no immediate danger, compared to others. I have the privilege of merely feeling helpless in the face of tremendous pain and suffering. This in itself is exhausting— it drains my vitality, wears me thin around the edges. And while I don’t feel “bored”, exactly (if anything, it’s the opposite!), I understand that what our culture calls “boredom” means our inability to tolerate the present moment.

If we had to really stop and feel how deeply afraid we are (of civil war, of global war, of being the victim of a hate crime or mass killing, of being snatched up and disappeared, of concentration camps, of not having medical care, of losing our jobs, our savings, our homes, our clean air and water, our livable planet); how much we are hurting; how exhausted (“nothing but tired”); angry, grief-stricken, f*cking enraged we feel— it would be more than most of us could bear.

Strategies, symptoms, signs

Messages keep getting clearer
Radio's on and I'm moving 'round my place

I check my look in the mirror
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face

We each have strategies to avoid this pain, this intolerable “boredom”— we stay compulsively busy, we shop, we fixate on our appearance, we scroll, we binge, numb ourselves, do whatever we can to avoid this feeling.

I’m calling them strategies, but you might hear them called symptoms, or disorders. Depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, mystery pains, rashes, etc. These are the symptoms— of our deeper unrest, discomfort, and suffering. If we separate ourselves from a medical or pathological lens, we can see that these symptoms also point to what’s missing or fragmented in our selves, lives, and the world we live in.

The quiet desperation of “Hey baby, I could use just a little help” is more than just a lonely (horny) man’s plea— it’s our universal longing for our sense of meaning, vitality, the spark that’s missing.

Yogini Spirit (The Sky Walker), 2023 by Tserin Sherpa; his personal lens on the mythology of Tibetan Buddhism lights a spark for me.

Mythic dissociation

Each of us carries within ourselves a sense of what is right for us. It consists not only of our own moral compass, but our hopes and dreams for ourselves and our world. This drives us toward our destiny-- what Jung called individuation. Our personal myth is what gives our lives meaning; it is the life-blood of our soul and our connection with our understanding of God, spirituality, etc.

James Hollis speaks about a phenomenon he calls “mythic dissociation” — living within “energy systems and stories that are not consonant with the topography of your own soul, with the terrain of your own spirit.”

When we are forced to live in someone else’s myth-- a myth that oppresses us (due to physical or mental ability, race, political or immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, war)— finding the thread of our own sense of purpose can feel not only impossible, but even laughable— who has time for this sh*t? I’m just trying to survive. Yet Jung believed that suppressing our myth, or being forced to deny it, was the source of much of our mental and physical illness.

Living in a culture that values productivity over concepts like “the meaning of my existence” means that we feel especially lost when faced with systemic failure. We voted, we marched, we called our senators— what else can we do?!

I could use just a little help

Stay on the streets of this town
And they'll be carving you up, all right
They say you gotta stay hungry
Hey baby, I'm just about starving tonight

"Staying on the streets of this town,” metaphorically, is getting us nowhere— that rasp as he grates out, “I’m just about starving tonight!” is the plaintive cry of the hungry soul that knows it can’t keep going the way it has been.

If you are feeling alone in the dark right now, here are some final prompts to consider.

• What symptoms are you experiencing now? (crankiness, depression, insomnia, isolation, workaholism, etc?).

• What strategies are you using to survive? (we ALL have “healthy” and “unhealthy” strategies— try to identify both).

• How does it shift your thinking to understand these symptoms and strategies as signs of your being called to participate in your own life’s purpose; if you see the suffering itself as being evidence of the “spark” you need?

• If, as Jung said, you are a question that is being addressed to the world, what is your answer?

Notice any judgment that arises around your answers and see if you can notice where our cultural myths are conflicting with your own truths. Satya Doyle Byock’s post on the Archetypes of Resistance may be helpful here.

The longing is the love

In Buddhism, we say that the suffering is itself a symptom of what we call essential goodness— which other traditions might call God. And just as a bird always knows how to fly back to its own nest, we know how to find our way back to that place within ourselves that is essentially good. The suffering shows us the way home. The longing we feel for something to be different— that is our own divine nature pointing us to our path.

When I feel lost, or hopeless, or dissociated from my own myth; when it feels like the spark is about to go out, and “I ain’t got nothing to say” starts to take over, I remember that this pain itself is a meaningful sign. The longing is the love, and that’s enough for now. It lets me reach out again, and again.

Until next time— xo, LBW