The Rapunzel Lesson
I was once working with one of my coaches, a Steiner-inspired Biographical Counsellor. She had me creating something out of clay to represent a certain period of my life.
These kinds of exercises let us connect to parts of our intelligence, axes of our wisdom, that rational thought alone can’t access.
As the sculpture emerged, a name for that chapter of my life became clear: The Lonely Tower.
Sitting, looking at the clay tower in front of me, I started to think of Rapunzel.
I’ve been fascinated by fairy tales since I was little, and by myths and legends for almost as long, but it was only in discovering the work of Joseph Campbell and Jordan Peterson that I started to ask: what are the deep lessons about the human experience that are being taught in these stories?
What I learned from Campbell and Peterson was: for a story to stick around for hundreds or thousands of years, it has to have something pretty important to say. And often that is about the deepest most meaningful parts of what it is to be human.
And so I started thinking about the girl with the impossibly long hair, trapped at the top of her own lonely tower.
And here’s what I started to think: no matter how much I may want them to, no one can rescue me until I let them in.
I have the only method to let people into the tower.
In fact, it’s part of me.
And no handsome prince, no matter how dashing and brave, can save me until I give him the way to do that.
My friend Mike is a psychotherapist and so works with people in incredibly difficult moments. Outwardly, he says, they may say to him that there is no possibility for change and hope. But by simply being there, in the therapy room, their behaviour tells a different story. It tells us that they believe change is possible.
On some level, they have let down their hair.
Of course, there is more symbolism in Rapunzel than just that. In the various retellings that come to mind, what can be said about parents who steal from next door in order to have their dream child come into reality? What of the witch that steals the baby back? What of the prince, blinded, and only cured by true love’s tears?
(And don’t get me started on other fairy tales - but do read Sleeping Beauty as if it’s a lesson in what happens to you if you don’t invite the parts of yourself that you dislike to the party.)
But in my work and life I’ve been thinking of the Rapunzel lesson ever since.
How we live in the age of what Robert Holden calls Dysfunctional Independence, and need to remember - if I paraphrase him - that the next level of success always requires a new level of collaboration.
How hard my wife and I find it to ask for help, even from people who are offering it.
How transformative it can be for clients to begin to step into the tension of transformational work like coaching - how magical things sometimes start to happen almost as soon as they reach out, or between the moment where they pay me the money and the moment we start our work start to work.
Those things and more are Rapunzel in action.
So maybe it’s time to let down your hair.
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PS My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose
This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.