Sometimes I think my life consists almost entirely of second acts, and the seconds acts have transformed me.

The most famous and too-often quoted quote about second acts comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said there were no second acts in American life. Scholars have howled for decades that his quote was taken out of context, and been misinterpreted,  and was, in fact,  made just before he had a brilliant second literary act of his own.

We can either be prisoners of history or learn from it.

American public and political life is filled with second acts – the country is of itself a great second act – and many people experience them all the time, from divorce to reinvention.

I am certainly one of those people for whom second acts are nothing less than a resurrection. It is a matter, I think, of faith and will.

People who do not believe in second acts are faced with hopelessness. People who believe in second acts never lose faith or hope.

My love with Maria is a second act, so is my marriage. My farm is a second act, my dogs are fourth and fifth acts. My photography is a second act, my search for a black and white camera is a second act, so is my new book contract with a new publisher.

So often, in my life, as in yours, I faced the darkest storms. They all led to second acts.

My blog that you are reading now is most surely a second act, perhaps my most creative. The art of Ed Gulley is a second act. So is Scott and Lisa Carrino’s Round House Cafe. And Maria’s Schoolhouse Studio. In one sense, second acts are the point of the hero journey. All around me, second acts blossom and bloom and shout like a summer carnival at night, lighting up the world around them.

In life, we often meet a challenge at the threshold, it is often the encounter with the dark shadow, the fateful choice. Will we live a loveless life, or a hollow one? Accept work we hate? Live a life that is unfulfilled? Surrender to fear and regret? Hide the creative spark? Or will we choose a second act, try to fulfill our destiny?

Joseph Campbell writes that these encounters vary, they might be with a uncaring boss, a dragon, an supportive spouse, a malignant enemy, a hostile family, financial desperation.

We have to face the dragon or return to the ordinary world to bow to our fate. In myth, the symbol for surrender is dismemberment.

Or the hero – you, me – can choose a different fate, accept the call to adventure, and have a resurrection from discouragement and the death of a real life. We can choose a second act. We can live in our own myth.

The whole idea of the second act is to recover that which you lost, the unrealized, un-utilized potential in yourself. The whole point of the hero journey – our mythical and historic second act – is the reintroduction of our potential in the world. At age 61, I undertook my hero journey second act.

I found my myth and sought to live in it – a life of meaning, of life, of creation, of honesty, of generosity, I wanted to bring the elixir back and hand it to those who are setting out.

My world fell apart then, I was overwhelmed by storms and shadows, I was nearly lost. I declared to myself that I was going to live in the world. I was going to find love and restore my moral purpose; I would bring my new treasure of understanding back into the world  and integrate it into a rational life.

I will not lie and say that this was easy, or painless, it nearly tore me to pieces, and the truly difficult days had just begun. But then, I was resurrected, I was reborn in a sense, pieced together.

I saw the sanctity of the second act, in my life, in Maria’s, we were blessed to share the hero journey together, magical helpers to one another, holding each other’s hand through the storms, reassuring the other that we were good, we would survive, we could come out to the other side, out of the darkness and into the light.

And then, there is the second act of the artist, who takes the plunge. If you take colors and put them on a disk and spin the colors, they will sooner or later reveal white. The colors of the world can be so manipulated. they can be arranged in so creative and artful a way that they will reveal the true light.

That is the role of the artist, to reveal the true light. The artist is meant to put the objects of the world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, are revealed.

In a sense, the second act is the process through which this radiance shines. A good life, said Joseph Campbell, is one hero journey after another. A good life, says me, is one second act after another, and I think we may are saying the same thing.  You are never there, you are always on the way.

Each time, there is the same fear, the same question: Do I dare?

And then, if I do dare, the dangers are always there, and also the joys and the rewards.

There is always the possibility of fiasco.

There is always the possibility of bliss.