One of my favorite movies of all time is “The Wizard of Oz”; I first saw it as a kid, way back in the early 60s, and it was nothing more than a fairy tale to me then; witches, wizards, talking scarecrows, flying monkeys… But the older I got, the more I saw in it, and the more I got out of it (if you’ve never seen the movie, go rent it or borrow it from the library or get it from netflix and watch it).
There’s an ancient tradition that appears in almost every culture under one name or another: the “rite of passage” (“vision quest” is another common name for it). It’s a journey from one state to another (for instance, adolescence to adulthood) or one status to another (outsider to group member), where someone is taken from their normal surroundings (Dorothy gets blown out of Kansas and into Oz by a tornado), goes on an extended adventure in unfamiliar territory (Dorothy’s journey through Oz in her quest to find the Wizard), faces a series of challenges (Dorothy and her companions have to get the broom from the Wicked Witch of the West), and attains their new state (or status) at the end.
Dorothy Ends Up Back Where She Started
At first glance, it might seem ironic that Dorothy ends up back in Kansas after all that, but one of the ironies of the rite of passage is that it never really changes anything external; the person who started the journey is basically the same person who comes out at the end (Dorothy is still Dorothy). But they now know things about themselves and the nature of reality that they couldn’t (or didn’t want to) see when their journey began.
In Dorothy’s case, at the beginning of her journey she wants nothing more than to be anywhere but Kansas; at the end, she realizes “there’s no place like home”.
Ending Up Back Where We Started
Now, nearly 50 years after I first saw “The Wizard of Oz,” and more than 10 years after I began my own journey of freedom from smoking, I realize that there are a lot of parallels between Dorothy’s journey and the quitter’s journey:
Like Dorothy, we’re on a journey from one state (being a smoker) to another (being a non-smoker). Also like Dorothy, we start by leaving our “home” state (being a smoker) and go on an extended adventure in unfamiliar territory (quitting smoking), face a series of challenges (withdrawal, craves, being around smoking friends, etc.) and emerge in our new state (being a non-smoker) which is actually our original “home” state (we were all born non-smokers and spent most of our formative years in that state).
Maybe most importantly, like Dorothy, we almost all look for something or someone outside of ourselves that can magically make our journey shorter or easier (heck, we’d settle for possible). Dorothy hoped the Wizard could do it for her; we hope that a magic pill, a medical procedure, or some other outside agent can do it for us.
But the bottom line is, like Dorothy, we have to take the journey. Wherever it leads, however long it takes, whatever the challenges.