The Two Halves of the Warrior's Life
Episode Stats
Summary
The Roman Empire hires a former legionnaire to hunt down a courier and intercept a letter he s carrying from the Apostle Paul. But when this mercenary overtakes the courier, something happens that neither he nor the empire could have ever predicted. This is the plot of the latest novel from writer Stephan Pressfield, entitled A Man at Arms.
Transcript
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the art of manliness podcast the roman army hires a former legionnaire to hunt down a courier and
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intercept a letter he's carrying from the apostle paul but when this mercenary overtakes the courier
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something happens that neither he nor the empire could have ever predicted this is the plot of the
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latest novel from writer stephen pressfield entitled a man at arms pressfield is the author
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of numerous works of both fiction including gates of fire and the tides of war and non-fiction
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including the war of art and the warrior ethos on today's show stephen explains why he decided to
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return to writing a novel set in the ancient world after a 13-year hiatus from doing so and why he
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chose to center around one of paul's epistles and the threat the roman empire perceived in the growing
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movement of christianity we discuss how the protagonist of a man at arms named telamon
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embodies the archetype of the warrior in a philosophy of dust and strife and yet has exhausted the
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archetype and is ready to integrate something else into it a philosophy of love stephen explains how
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the journey telamon is on applies to all artists entrepreneurs and individuals and the transition
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we almost make from the first half of life in which we're discovering our gifts and honing our skills
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to the second half of life in which we figure out what those gifts and skills are for after the show's
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over check out our show notes at awim.is man at arms stephen joins you now via clearcast.io
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all right stephen pressfield welcome back to the show hey brett it's a pleasure to be here thanks
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for having me so you got a new novel out a man at arms and what makes this novel unique it's your
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first novel set in the ancient world so we've you know i'm sure a lot of our listeners read like gates
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of fire the virtues of war this is your first novel set in the ancient world in over 13 years so my first
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question is why has it been so long since you've written a book set in ancient rome or ancient
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greece and what was it about this story that made you decide this is it i gotta write another novel
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set in the ancient world well it's it's uh i was having a coffee with a friend of mine like about 13
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years ago whatever it was another writer and he was making fun of me or he was saying how are you
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going to kill the next person in your book are you going home to worry is it a spear is it a sword is
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it you know do you knife them whatever it is and i sort of got i said to myself you know maybe i've
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been too long in this area and i should get into the modern world a little bit so i decided okay i'm
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i'm gonna i'm gonna shift and write stuff that's more contemporary for a while because i didn't i also
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didn't want to get sort of typecast as only being in the ancient world but i missed it you know and i
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missed the uh the effects that you can produce when you use kind of let's say more noble language
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that you can that you can do when you're writing in the ancient world and i wanted to tell the story
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of this one character telamon it's a recurring character in three of my other books and i was
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just you know it takes a long time brett to find a story sometimes you know you you try and you try and
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try you don't you just can't find one and finally a couple years ago i did find it and it was
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great fun to do a book that was only about this one character a favorite character of mine telamon
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and also to get back into the ancient world well so how did i mean the basic story is that telamon
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he's a former roman legionnaire and this is around the time when the early christian movement was
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just starting right and he decides to team up i mean that's how it ends up but teaming up with
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some christian messengers who were carrying epistles for the apostle paul how did where did that
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come from that's just seems out of left field it's uh the the long backstory is my niece got
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married a couple of years ago and she asked me to be the officiant at the ceremony actually my brother
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had already secretly married them and i was going to be the public face of this so i went to the book
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of common prayer to try to find put together my own little you know traditional type of whatever you
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wanted to call it a service whatever and everything that i fell in love with came out of paul's letter
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to the corinthians first corinthians you know through we see through a glass darkly and faith hope
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and charity and all of all those wonderful great quotes and that just sort of stuck in my mind and
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you know things percolate and you know as a writer you're always looking for some hook to hang a story
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on and i thought this is a great thing this letter this that actually was a real letter that had to
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be delivered and that the romans were trying to stop it and they made perfect bad guys for a kind of a
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you know an action chase story that would have real depth to it that would really be about things on on
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the soul level and not just on the action level so that's how the story came together red and i'm
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curious how'd you go about researching the book because writing about christianity can be tricky
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because it's you know it's something it's so part of our culture if you grew up in the west like
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you know the story basically so it's hard to get at it in a different angle what but what i liked
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about reading a man at arms is that oftentimes i felt like i wasn't reading a book about christianity
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i was like reading like a work of political fiction where i was able to see how the romans or even the
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jews looked at or viewed this this early movement so you know first like how did you research that
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and like was that what you're trying to convey you're trying to like look at the christian movement
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from a different perspective yes i mean i i certainly do not consider this a book about christianity by
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any means if anything i would say it was a kind of a political thriller or an action story it really
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is more about the movement of early christianity as seen through the eyes of rome of the empire of
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rome and as as seen as a threat as something that they have to deal with which it really was and
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rather than until the very end of the story which i don't want to give anything away only then does it
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really get into kind of the spiritual aspects but i definitely felt like i was telling a kind of a
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political story of a movement that was a threat to an empire and the empire's moves to crush that
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movement and can you give us you know a taste of what that world looked like the way you describe
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in your book well one of the things that i thought was really interesting was that early christianity
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was a threat not just to the roman empire but to the jewish community to you know the the kingdom of
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israel at the time judea because it threatened to split and weaken the jewish community under which
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was under tremendous oppression from rome and needed to be as united as it possibly could so that there
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were a number of elements bad guys trying to stop this growing faith and at that time the story is set
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like maybe 20 years after the crucifixion so it's really about the primary engine of fledgling
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christianity at this point was the apostle paul who was sort of the i don't know the paramount proselytizer
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the paramount push behind expanding it into uh the various communities around the world and i like the
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way you describe that from like the roman perspective oftentimes the the the generals when they talked about
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the christians they didn't even like call them christians they just called them like the messianic
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jews like they were just like a crazy branch of judaism yes because i think that's exactly what it
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was it wasn't thought of as this new thing called christianity it was just sort of these crazy jews
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this crazy offshoot of jews that believed in another another world and that had tremendous faith
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and that you know really had a type of belief and the type of passion that could threaten an empire
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like what what was threatening about it i mean you can they just be like well these are kind of
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wackadoos just ignore them like what what do you think the threat was well the threat was that it was
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a so expansionist that its home was really not in this world its home was in the kingdom of heaven
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and so anybody that you can see it in passionate movements today too where someone uh where the the
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group the collective kind of breaks mentally and emotionally breaks out of the the concerns of
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the material world and is concerned with another world the world beyond this world and so is willing
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to under undergo sacrifices and give up their lives and etc etc and also at at the time i think early
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christianity among the people who were following it was an absolute sensation in terms of the passion
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that it aroused and i think that rome felt and i say this in the book i put this in the mouths of
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one of the tribunes that the emperor's sleep was not troubled by other armies but but rather a new
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faith something that people could believe in beyond this world that was a real threat and in fact
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that's what did bring down the roman empire so that the vatican is now in rome right i mean it became
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the seat of christianity very heart of the empire and the other interesting thing about the christian
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movement like they they were using the empire to further their their aims right like paul they were
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able to be able to reason why paul's able to like connect with all these different groups because
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like rome the empire built all these roads and shipping lines and they were using that to spread
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their message yes that was a kind of a delicious irony of the thing that the very modern inventions that
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rome had brought see you know the roads that they built the mail this was what the apostle used
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to further his message and get it out there so rome was sort of you know complicit in its own demise
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in that sense well let's talk about telamon so you mentioned this was a character from previous books what
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other books did he make an appearance in he was in tides of war which was set during the peloponnesian
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war then he came back unchanged and un unaged not a hundred years later as a mentor to alexander
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in my book the virtues of war and then i even set him and gave him a cameo in a book called the
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profession that's actually set in our contemporary future about 20 years in the future but that was a
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tiny thing but he was in he was in two books where you know 70 80 years apart where he had not aged a
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day and then in this new one in a man at arms it's another few hundred years later and he hasn't aged a
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day either and what's going on like what do you i think that's interesting you'd have a character
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who's the same guy but it just he shows up in different time periods i mean to me you know this
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it brett it's kind of interesting because this is it's nothing i particularly planned you know i
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didn't say oh i'm gonna have this character in one book and again and again but once i sort of
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started doing that it seemed to really make great sense to me to me telamon is sort of the the supreme
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archetype of the warrior but he is also the universal soldier in the sense that he appears in
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century after century unchanged just like war is a universal constant in the human race and
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warriors don't change either so he is one of these he's the universal soldier to me who appears over
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and over again and of course the next question is why is it did he commit some terrible crime in the
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past that he's have has to pay for by doing this and i don't even know the answer to that but i just i
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just see him as stuck and in this archetype and sort of condemned to live it over and over
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and what's interesting about telamon in this in a man at arms is that okay he's a former legionnaire
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and in the roman army they're like a legionnaire you had a career like you you serve for a certain
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amount of time then you got some land you basically were able to take it easy but he doesn't do that
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once he his service is up he decides to become a mercenary what do you think's going on there why
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didn't he fall is it just because he's that archetypical warrior he has to keep fighting
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i think that's that's exactly it that his as he says in a man at arms he was in the legions but he
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was not of them and that he never really he never embraced you know the eagle or the idea of roman
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citizenship or the three-part name that romans always took or that you know people might volunteer
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for the legions in spain let's say or in gaul and they would not be romans they would be natives of
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that country and they would in essence take on a roman identity they would change their name kind of
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like in the french foreign legion and they would take a roman name and they would achieve roman
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citizenship and they would you know essentially be faux romans you know or artificial romans and in
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their mind of course they were full-fledged romans and then they would go through their service and
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as you said they'd get maybe some land or they would you know have various bounties that they
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achieved over time and have some money but telamon is a guy who from the previous two books of mine
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is beyond all that he doesn't care who he serves for he doesn't care what the flag is
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he is a his goddess the only goddess he worships is eris the greek goddess of strife and he is one of
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these guys who is a rare bird that he said as he says i fight for the fight alone i serve for the
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serving alone i tramp for the tramping alone so he was definitely not a part of the legions in any
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emotional way he was he was beyond that in his own mind so when he got out there was never a question
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that he would settle down and have a farm he's continuing to serve the goddess strife and moving on
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in his own way as a solitary individual to me he's kind of like a samurai that you see in the
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ronin movies where they were masterless samurai that were cut loose from the collective and were
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just on their own kind of like a a western gunslinger in an american western yeah or he's
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like a private eye you know like a humphrey bogart type you know like he has his own code it's not the
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code of the state but he's got his own code that he's going to follow no matter what exactly which
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is what makes him so interesting to me and what makes him i think a very modern character he's like
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a private eye he's like a clint eastwood man with no name type of gunslinger he's like the humphrey
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bogart character in casablanca an individual who has cut himself free from any collective beliefs
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any flag any cause any leader and is trying to navigate his way just as an individual
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you know by his own code which is constantly evolving as he has his various adventures
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and as you said it's primarily like he's just drawn to fighting like he calls it his philosophy
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is dust and strife and i'm as i was reading this i mean it's hard not to bring in some of the other
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stuff you've written about in your non-fiction about being an artist being a writer being a business
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person entrepreneur do you see any connection there like what you've written about and say like the
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war of art to telamon's dust and strife anti-hero philosophy yes absolutely i always i feel like
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i have sort of two types of books that that i write one is a kind of a uh inner war type of book like the
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war of art that's really about the mental and emotional world that an artist or an entrepreneur
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deals with and the other are these novels that are usually set in the ancient world and they're about
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the outer war where the warfare becomes a metaphor external warfare becomes a metaphor for the
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internal war and one of the things that's really interesting to me about the character of telamon
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is that he's fighting both he is a physical warrior for whom violence is a way of life but he's also
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a philosopher and he's trying to fight his own internal war this as strong a character as he is as a warrior
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he feels frustrated in that he's like up against a wall like he's exhausted that archetype and much
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like you know say the humphrey bogart character in casablanca or the clint eastwood character in
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various westerns or a lot of samurais they they can do their thing they can win these fights they can
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endure adversity but they know in their hearts that something is missing that they're kind of stuck
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and this story like like westerns or like samurai movies is about bringing the warrior beyond that
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to the next level which you know involves a step into love and that's where the of the apostle paul's
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letter comes into this whole story and tying this back into like your work with artists and
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entrepreneurs like do you see a lot of artists and entrepreneurs like that's their philosophy they
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take that sort of dust and strife philosophy when they first start out i i think absolutely and i
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think you know that you almost have to right you're if you're an entrepreneur and you're and you're
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launching a new business or startup or something or if you're an artist and you're writing a book or a
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movie or you're a musician or whatever you're alone and the world is a hard cruel world and if you're
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going to break through that world you kind of have to have an aggressive mindset a warrior mindset and
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it's also very much of an eagle mindset it's really uh you know us against the world type of environment
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just or mindset just to kind of break through but once you do break through once you do have you have
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established yourself that we're somewhere then the next question becomes what am i going to do with
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this identity that i have with this platform that i've achieved am i just is it just about my own
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ego and pushing forward for more you know money or whatever or is it actually about something do i
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really have some some gift that i want to give to the world or some message that i'd like to bring
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we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show and one of the ways you flesh out the character of telamon is he has an
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apprentice or and i'd say like i don't think telamon is the kind of guy like he's he's a lone he's a
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lone gun so of course he wouldn't want an apprentice but so rather this kid basically decided telamon
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you're gonna be my mentor whether you like it or not tell us about this boy and like what can we
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learn about telamon because of the boys like attract like him wanting to be mentored by telamon
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that that's a great question brett and i this was almost an instinctive choice as a writer i i had the
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character of telamon and something made me say to myself he needs an apprentice he needs somebody
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that idolizes him and also somebody that we can see the story through his through his eyes and uh i was
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thinking have you seen the movie seven samurai yes you know the the um the lead samurai at the
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very start of the movie has has a young samurai attach himself to him you remember that character
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right right goes all the way through the knee you know he bows down to him he says please sir you
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know make me your apprentice i want to learn from you and i thought that that was just a great way
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of getting into telamon's character because the way he teaches the apprentice is he he never says
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anything he just allows him to watch or he says very few things and of course what was clear to me
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as a writer was that in the end it was going to be the apprentice who winds up teaching the master
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and that things would would turn by the end so that was the reason for the character of david the young
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boy who who follows telamon and give some context david you know he comes from a i guess a really
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religious like his religious jewish family so what you know going the warrior path was like yeah that's
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not what you're supposed to do but he still wanted to do that yeah he was definitely some he came from
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like an impoverished family he's illiterate but very much felt the oppression of the roman empire on them
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and very much felt that the jewish community as it stood at that time was not strong enough
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to to resist this thing and so he himself just kind of seeking manhood seeking masculinity if you want
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to use that word which i do sought out the most masculine character that he could find and attached
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himself to them because he wanted to learn to stand up for himself and to stand up for the community
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and you know telamon he could have just told this kid to take a hike or even killed him like you're
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just annoying me but he doesn't why do you think that is have you figured that out or is it was like
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telamon just opening himself up to to change or what do you think that's a great question brett it's
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sort of like have you ever read a book called save the cat i have not by blake snyder it's a wonderful
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book there's like three or four of these books it's about screenwriting it's about writing movies
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and blake snyder is a screenwriter or was he died tragically at a young age but um one of the
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things that the idea behind save the cat is that any hero in a story needs to do something early in
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the story that makes us in the audience think that he's a good guy or a good gal and the save the cat is
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is um blake snyder's way of doing that the hero should save a cat or something like that do something
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nice because most heroes in stories if you think about gunslingers or samurais or private eyes or
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any of these kind of classic hard-bitten heroes most of them are really tough hombres there's hard to
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like and a lot of them violence is their first uh gesture in anything their first option so to let us
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the viewer into the story you sort of need to have a little bit of a something that shows uh this guy has
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a little bit of a soft spot anywhere but also more important than that i mean i knew with telemon
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at the start of the story that he was going to seem to be the all-time hardcore badass guy but by the
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end of the story he was going to switch and come all the way over to a position of love so i wanted
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along the way for us to see that even beneath his crusty hard exterior he does have compassion
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and he can feel feel for somebody and take on this young boy i mean to do that was really a
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real gesture of empathy and and a real kind gesture and i think that made a lot of sense that that would
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then come out later in the story as we got to know telemon completely i'm curious in your in your own
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life have there been situations where you were david the boy looking for that that mentor or when you
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were telemon and you've had a young person like show me the ways have you experienced that personally
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uh that's another great question brett i mean i definitely have have had both and if i would say
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one was more predominant it's that i've had mentors and i've had many mentors where i was in the position
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of of being the apprentice and that have been absolutely invaluable to me could not have done
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you know anything that i've done without them so yeah i think that's a huge part of our evolution
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i'm sure it's true for you too you know that you find yourself taking people under your wing from time
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to time and also reaching out to mentors that can that can guide you and and give you some feedback
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along the journey that we're all on well did you have a mentor that stood out to you like that was
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like really kind of that telemon like really crusty and grouchy but you learned a lot from them
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i've had many but i'll tell you one in my 20s i drove trucks for a while and i had a mentor a guy
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named hugh reeves who was a dispatcher at this trucking company in north carolina that i worked for
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and he took me in when he had no real reason to do to do so i was really like clearly kind of lost and
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you know in my own weird journey and there was one moment that he that was really made a big deep
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impression on me i was on my own sort of um hero's journey my own odyssey i was lost whatever
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and and i kept screwing up you know i would you know deliver loads late and i would you know get
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into accidents and stuff like that and at one point hugh called me into his office and he you know sat
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me down and he said he said son i don't know what sort of journey you're on in your own mind here
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but this is a business we are in business here and you are a representative of this business
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we are our job is to to deliver loads and deliver them on time and not to screw up and you cannot
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afford to be going through whatever emotional stuff you are in your head you got to get it together
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because this is a business designed to make money and that was like you know one of those moments of
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you know a slap in a face you know thanks i needed that type of thing so he was a great mentor to me
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and and i'm grateful to him to this day well yeah he taught you how to be professional yeah he certainly
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gave me that idea anyway it took me a long long time to actually become a professional all right so
00:26:02.360
tell them on former legionnaire he gets basically voluntold by the roman army to hunt down a courier who's
00:26:10.760
carrying a letter from the apostle paul because again the romans are freaking out that this this
00:26:16.380
movement is going to spread and bring down the empire he meets the courier and instead of turning
00:26:21.820
the courier in he has some sort of conversion and we're not going to talk about what that conversion
00:26:26.240
looked like because that's that's the book that's that's the we don't want to we don't want to do that
00:26:29.880
but i mean i'd like to use that his conversion whatever that is as a starting off point to discuss
00:26:36.080
that what you're talking about that that switch from mercenary values that philosophy of strife and
00:26:42.440
dust to a philosophy guided by love like what is i mean for you what does that what does a philosophy
00:26:49.000
guided by love look like in an artist's life or a business person's life just a man's life and i'm
00:26:56.400
guessing does tell them on completely leave this philosophy of strife and dust behind and embrace this
00:27:02.340
love philosophy he doesn't really i think he integrates it and there's a character that is
00:27:08.000
central to this that we haven't mentioned and it's a young girl who is a nine-year-old mute feral girl
00:27:16.460
who is the daughter or at least we think she's the daughter of this this suspected courier that's
00:27:23.120
carrying the letter we don't know where the letter is we it's all a mystery and a bond begins to form
00:27:29.540
between telamon and this girl and it's sort of a mysterious bond that they just seem to be
00:27:36.260
simpatico with each other and that in essence she proves to be of all the warriors in this story and
00:27:44.140
there's a bunch of them she is the sort of the the supreme warrior of in terms of of dedication
00:27:51.280
and of ability to rise to an occasion and so what happens with him without giving away too much of the
00:27:59.200
story telamon is that he finds his heart opening to this girl sort of like it did to david to the
00:28:06.580
boy who he takes on as his apprentice and the story as it goes along this girl kind of proves herself
00:28:13.740
over and over to him in one way or another and he begins to not so much care for any message or any
00:28:24.260
spiritual doctrine as he cares for her and that's kind of what where love kind of enters the picture
00:28:32.340
but he remains a warrior throughout the whole thing and his warrior skills are set in the service
00:28:40.640
of this of this love and you know when the apostle paul talks about love in in his letter to the
00:28:49.260
corinthians he's not really talking about romantic love or the love that we feel for a brother or the
00:28:55.340
love that we feel for a wife or for a family he's talking about true christian love at the highest level
00:29:02.220
you know love for um the entire human race and for anyone who is suffering anyone who is vulnerable
00:29:10.820
and love for the kingdom of heaven the highest form of love agape really in greek all these elements
00:29:18.680
kind of come together as the story progresses the letter the girl the bad guys etc well let's tie it
00:29:26.080
back into your previous like non-fiction writing have you seen this sort of theme play out in your
00:29:30.480
non-fiction writing as well yes i mean i think that what if we ask ourselves let's say we want to be a
00:29:37.940
writer we want to be an entrepreneur we want to be a songwriter a filmmaker or whatever the first
00:29:44.520
step is to kind of learn how to do that to be a professional at that to acquire those those skills
00:29:51.400
but the next step sort of the second half of of our adventure is what are we going to use those skills
00:29:59.040
for what and in essence if we think about this is maybe getting a little too deep brett but what the
00:30:05.720
hell let's do it if you think about the hero's journey in the uh joseph campbell sense
00:30:10.760
which is kind of a self-initiation that an individual goes through through whatever suffering
00:30:17.380
they have whatever journeys they undergo it always ends kind of like odysseus coming back home to
00:30:23.180
ithaca it returned it always ends with a return home kind of like dorothy comes back to kansas or any
00:30:30.380
hero sort of returns to where they started but they return as a different person and they return this is
00:30:36.840
according to the legend with quote unquote a gift for the people which comes from what they've learned
00:30:43.980
on this journey what their solitary suffering has brought them to so the question then becomes if
00:30:50.760
you're an entrepreneur if you're an artist or whatever what is my gift that's the question that
00:30:56.120
we all have to ask ourselves what if if you're a writer you say well what kind of books was i put here to
00:31:02.460
to to produce and when when you get to that the question really is it's really a gift for the world
00:31:14.080
it's a gift for others whatever your whatever your the song you're writing is meant maybe to
00:31:21.120
bring somebody up from a depressed place maybe to to tell them that they're not alone in a in a
00:31:28.660
situation a broken heart or or frustrated life whatever but it is a gift and it's a gift that's
00:31:35.660
given out of love and that's i believe i believe that is the whole meaning of our existence on this
00:31:43.960
planet that we kind of start off as children as infants where it's all me me me give me my food you
00:31:50.620
know whatever and even as we become adults it's still a kind of a me me me thing right i want to
00:31:56.740
achieve my goals i want to make money i want to establish an identity i want to have a family
00:32:01.780
bump at a bump at bump but at some point the question becomes what am i doing all this for
00:32:07.480
and the answer if we're going to be if we're going to evolve and not be stuck in some case of arrested
00:32:13.760
development is that we're we're giving something from our heart to the rest of the world and if you're
00:32:20.700
if you're an artist that's your art that's your books that's your music whatever if you're an
00:32:25.180
entrepreneur it's whatever business that you're putting forward so i think that's how if we are
00:32:30.640
going to evolve we evolve from fear to love or from ego to love no i like this because this ties in
00:32:38.560
nicely with some other guests we've had on the podcast like david brooks has that book the second
00:32:43.280
mountain and then um and that's and then there's like richard roars is franciscan yeah yeah richard
00:32:48.900
roars yeah david brooks too you're absolutely right those are definitely guys that i am tuned into and
00:32:53.640
i read all their stuff right so this idea is like first you the first part of life is like you're
00:32:58.420
there to like construct a self and it's very practical hands-on so like what you're talking
00:33:02.840
about you have to learn your craft learn how to be a good writer be a professional and then at a
00:33:07.020
certain point you have to figure out well what's this for and i'm curious like what do you think
00:33:12.160
happens if you reverse those like what if you try to like get that more higher level idea first before
00:33:17.660
getting the practical level like what happens if you are telemon who's guided by love before you are
00:33:24.160
telemon the mercenary man at arms that's a great question i'm not sure i really have a real answer
00:33:30.020
i've never even thought about it um what were you going to say brett i don't know either that's what
00:33:35.760
i was thinking as i was as you're talking i was like what would happen if you flip the script
00:33:38.920
it seems to me unnatural to do that in that i i don't know if that actually would work i think
00:33:46.160
sometimes someone at a young age might think that they are doing something purely out of love
00:33:52.700
but i'm not so i would be skeptical if i met that person not to say that it doesn't happen or it isn't
00:33:59.940
true but um i i really don't know what the answer to that is it just doesn't seem like things work that
00:34:08.380
way yeah i mean i'm just ripping off the cuff here i mean they probably would be ineffective
00:34:13.100
right because you wouldn't have the skills like you have this idea of what you want and like what
00:34:16.980
but like you don't have any skills to make it come to pass to make it manifest itself
00:34:21.960
and so you just it's you're you're sort of impotent in a way or even i would say beyond the idea of skill
00:34:29.140
i mean i have a theory i'm one of my books one of my non-fiction books i'm sure you know about it's
00:34:34.160
called the artist's journey and the theory of the thesis of that book is that we have two it's kind
00:34:40.640
of like richard roar first half of life and second half of life where that we have kind of two two
00:34:45.780
lives the first is our hero's journey and when that's done we go to our artist's journey which is
00:34:51.280
just like what richard roar says uh first you you establish the vessel that is yourself and in the
00:34:58.260
second half you ask yourself well what do i fill the vessel with but going back what i meant to say
00:35:02.860
was in that first half of life in that hero's journey it's not just about the acquisition of
00:35:09.780
skills i don't think i think it's also about a a humbling a deep humbling that happens to us i think
00:35:16.760
almost always the uh the hero's journey ends with or hits a point of what they would call in hollywood
00:35:25.020
an all is lost moment a moment where we really hit bottom and and then turn around from there and it
00:35:31.040
seems to me if we going back to the apostle paul it's the moment of his conversion on the road to
00:35:36.260
damascus you know but i so in other words i think the first half of life is not just about acquisition of
00:35:42.340
skills but it's about being broken it's about coming to a place where we say from our ego
00:35:50.300
i can't handle it my ego is not enough living out of the rational mind out of the ego
00:35:57.380
is not enough and we sort of at that point and this becomes kind of religious or at least spiritual
00:36:04.400
we sort of surrender we give up if we are if the analogy would be to say an alcoholic
00:36:09.460
but they would say and that moment that i have no control over alcohol and i have to call on a higher
00:36:16.620
power i give up i can't do this but i'm by myself so that i think the key to that is that once
00:36:23.820
we're humbled in that way then we're truly capable of love then we have empathy not just for ourselves
00:36:32.880
because we've been broken and we've seen how broken we can be but it immediately applies to others and
00:36:39.040
we start to have compassion well if i can fall apart like i've fallen apart or if i've seen to my
00:36:44.120
deepest self and i see how broken i am then everybody else is on that same path and my only real
00:36:50.840
honorable way of dealing with others is with compassion and empathy and to try to help and
00:36:56.680
and that's love so i don't don't mean to get too deep here but i think that's what it's about
00:37:02.320
and that you see that play out with telemon like he he has a moment where he's broken that moment
00:37:07.640
yeah and and then also and what i liked about the way you just do with the book is you you show
00:37:13.580
how that figuring out that second half of life stuff typically happens and again don't want to give
00:37:19.700
you got to read read in the papers if you want to see how that happens but it it's not the way
00:37:24.120
people typically think it happens it's not intellectual it's not rational it's something else
00:37:29.100
no it's definitely not it's definitely happening on the soul level and not on the behavioral level or
00:37:35.000
the psychological level for all of us when we come to that change and if you think of a lot of stories
00:37:41.360
have that same pattern books or movies where the hero hits a a point of a dead end you know if i'm
00:37:52.380
thinking of a movie cool hand luke i don't know if you remember that with paul newman oh yeah of course
00:37:56.400
where he's on the chain gang right and you know they finally break him or he hits that moment where
00:38:02.560
things turn around for him so it's a common i think for all of us and i'm curious have you already
00:38:09.500
thought about like what's what happens to tell him on next did he escape this sort of uh eternal
00:38:13.860
recurrence of being a a warrior no i haven't in fact i know i've got to and i'm kind of scared to
00:38:20.200
death of it i i know i haven't taken it all the way yet so uh i'm waiting for the muse to uh touch
00:38:27.940
down and help me on that one well steven this has been a great conversation where can people go
00:38:32.480
to learn more about the book and your work just my my website which is just my name steven pressfield
00:38:38.400
with a steven with a v and that's got you know all of the various stuff about it but the book is
00:38:43.280
on sale at amazon barnes and noble bookstores indies everywhere all right well steven pressfield
00:38:48.460
thanks for your time it's been a pleasure hey brett thank you very much i'll do it again anytime on
00:38:53.160
any subject all right thank you my guest today was steven pressfield he's the author of the book
00:38:58.080
a man at arms available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about
00:39:02.280
his work at his website stevenpressfield.com also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:39:07.120
slash man at arms where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:39:10.840
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at
00:39:21.360
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00:39:25.320
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00:39:50.340
next time i'm brett mckay reminding you not to listen to the aom podcast but put what you've heard