I’ve got to say, I’d rather spend time listening to Jordan Peterson than writing. Considering that I’m trying to build the life lessons I’ve learned into a book for my kids, this has been a problem.
It’s a problem because I’ve missed almost half a year worth of writing. Back in March, I was driving back to Texas and listening to The Art of Manliness podcasts. By a stroke of luck I randomly chose episode #335 — Exploring Archetypes with Jordan Peterson.
For the next half year, I spent as much driving and dog-walking time as possible listening to Peterson’s lectures. I sat at my desk listening to his 12 Rules For Life e-book while my keyboard gathered dust. My interest in reading and writing, even writing articles for my own labor union, fell off a cliff.
But there was a payoff to be had.
Finding a Framework for the Big Picture
Peterson’s teachings about how great myths and archetypes can help us navigate life’s troubles and find meaning is the piece that my own puzzle had been missing. Let me explain the significance of that.
Growing up, I had three grandfathers. Each of them provided very different words of advice and lessons. Each of the three lived successful and purposeful lives, but their paths to get there, as well as the advice they gave, differed greatly.
Lessons in stoicism and humility that one taught would have been bad advice for another who built a business empire on his outgoing and engaging personality. One encouraged me to have as many children as possible while another seemed hesitant about kids, likely because of the difficulty he had with his own.
Now that I have my own two sons to raise, I’m confronted with both the honor and challenge of passing on life lessons to them. The brick wall that I hit while working on my book was trying to find a common, underlying theme that could connect the myriad of sometimes conflicting lessons I’ve learned that have helped me find success and purpose.
The Payoff for Time Given to Peterson
Here’s how my half-year hiatus listening to Peterson paid off. Minda Zetlin asks in an Inc. article, “A person who’s talking is giving away information. A person who’s listening is receiving information. Who gets the best deal in that exchange?”
I’m the kind of person that likes to dig into the roots of a problem or topic. I could have spent years, possibly decades, studying the lessons I would like to teach my kids. There is a good chance I would have eventually gone down the rabbit hole and begun studying the stories of the ancients, looking for a common structure in their lessons on finding success and meaning.
Fortunately, Peterson spent much of his adult life doing that for me. His digging for the root of the issues brought him to the very beginning of the human experience, studying the lessons of great myths and religious teachings. He was nice enough to compile what he learned into two books. He was even nicer to read them aloud into e-books that I could digest while spending otherwise idle hours sitting in traffic.
By listening instead of writing, I gave up six months in exchange for lessons Peterson spent much of his life learning.
The broad lesson he presents can be summarized by the idea that you must prepare yourself for challenges, go out into the world, confront the chaos and unknown, and establish a living space where you can find meaning and a path in life. Failure to withstand the difficulties of the world can lead to bitterness, destruction, and evil.
From this foundation we can better analyze more specific lessons, such as the story of Noah’s preparation for the flood despite criticism from his neighbors, or Sleeping Beauty’s suffering due to her inability to handle maturity and adulthood (seriously, check out the podcast. It’s awesome).
You know as a twenty-something year old that you will face rejections in job applications. You must prepare for this by developing mental toughness and perseverance. Your romantic interests will shoot you down. You‘ll need a strong sense of self-worth to shake off rejection and stay in the game. At some point, people you love will die. You must have the maturity to deal with loss without it breaking you. And at some point, the reaper will be at your door. It’s up to you to face this fate with the courage needed to continue pursuing a purposeful life.
To answer Zetlin’s question, people who give their time to listen to Peterson get the best deal in that exchange.