L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz is the allegory for our times, so relevant to this discussion that the tale bears repeating (if you've only seen the movie, you know only a small fraction of the story):
A cyclone rips through the Kansas prairie, where Dorothy lives in childhood bliss with her Aunt Em, Uncle Henry and faithful dog, Toto. The tornado tears the house from its foundation and carries it to a strange land Dorothy has never seen before. The countryside is beautiful and filled with strange sights, but Dorothy wants the safety of her aunt's arms. Without realizing that the silver slippers she's wearing have the power to carry her home, she sets off down the Yellow Brick Road to ask the all powerful Wizard of Oz to help her.
Along the way, she meets up with the Scarecrow who wants to travel with her to Oz to ask for brains. Poor Scarecrow believes that there's nothing worse than being a fool, and thinks he's stupid even though he's really just young and inexperienced. Already he knows two things for certain: to be afraid of lighted matches, and how little he knows. Some people might call that wisdom.
The Scarecrow asks Dorothy to describe Kansas. When she explains how gray it was, he can't understand why she wants to return to such a dreary place, "That is because you have no brains!" Dorothy tells him. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home."
"Of course, I cannot understand it," says the Scarecrow. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."
After a while, their journey is interrupted by groans from a man made of tin, whose joints have become rusted from disuse.
When they oil his joints, he sighs with satisfaction and thanks them for saving his life. Hearing of their mission, he asks to join them on their journey because he would like a heart.
The Tin Woodman's story is a painful one. For much of his life, he was a woodsman who cared for his elderly mother. After his mother died, he fell in love with a Munchkin girl and wanted to marry her. But the girl's caretaker was an old woman who wanted the girl to cook and do housework for her forever. So the old woman got the Wicked Witch of the East to enchant the woodsman's ax, which made him cut off his own legs, arms and head. The tinnier replaced each part of the woodsman's body with a new tin part, but in the process, the woodsman lost his heart (and thus his love for the Munchkin girl). He stopped caring whether he married her or not.
The Tin Woodman was proud of his new body, which no one could cut or hurt ever again. But rust was his enemy. He spent a year rusted in place, which gave him plenty of time to think. He decided that the greatest loss he suffered was his heart, because you can't be happy if you can't love and you can't love without a heart.
While the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman debate whether it's better to have brains or a heart, Dorothy worries about what she'll eat, since she can't live without food. Hearing her concern, the Scarecrow uses the wits he doesn't have to gather nuts for her dinner from nearby trees.
Their next problem arises when they're "attacked" by a Lion who tries to scare them with his roar. When Dorothy calls his bluff and tells him he's a coward, he breaks down weeping. To his great sorrow, the king of the jungle lacks the courage to fulfill his destiny.
"My life is simply unbearable without a bit of courage," he says. So when the Lion hears of their journey, he decides to tag along and ask the Wizard of Oz for help.
As they travel companionably together, they encounter many problems and challenges. They conquer each obstacle by using the brains, heart and courage they think they lack.
The Wizard, of course, turns out to be a fraud. But he is also a good man who manages to give Scarecrow a brain made from pins and needles, the Tin Woodman a red cloth heart, and the Lion a magic potion for courage. But he doesn't have an effective strategy to get Dorothy home to Kansas. For that, they need the good witch Glinda who knows how to use her powers wisely.
First, she arranges to install Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion in leadership roles throughout the kingdom where each can use their newly found talents to rule. Then she shows Dorothy how to use the power of her silver slippers to return home.
Trust Your Inner Strength
Once you realize that Dorothy's journey is a dream, the story is easier to interpret. From a psychoanalytic point of view, the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion are parts of Dorothy's self that she's struggling to integrate. But she's terrified of separating from the safe world where her loving aunt and uncle care for all her needs. By the end of the adventure, though, Dorothy has grown in stature and become a more confident, self assertive person.
Dorothy's lesson is a universal one: that we all need to separate from the powerful figures of our childhood to cultivate the wisdom, compassion, courage and skill we need for our life's journey.
Dorothy needed the good witch Glinda to show her how to use the power she already had. This is what teachers and leaders and mentors are really for. And despite what respondents to the Patterson and Kim survey may think, there are always real role models or heroes whose examples you can learn from and follow. You just have to cultivate the eyes with which to see.
The cry of our times is for more responsible participation. As Herbert Hoover believed: "We need to add to the three R's, namely Reading, 'Kiting, and 'Rithmetic, a fourth- Responsibility."
When you get lost in the daily scuffle, tell yourself the Oz story. And remember the moral of the story: The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Lion and Dorothy all had the tools within themselves to achieve their deepest, most heartfelt desires.
