I know, I know… there are tons of analogies around journeys and adventures when it comes to our lives. And yet, despite the fact that we grow up with stories about them, in fables, myths, tales and lastly on the tv screen we fail to understand the true significance of adventure in our lives.
The proof can be found in the way we live and in the things we go after in our work. Seldom are the occasions on which we truly dare to take a risk. Rare are the opportunities we grasp to follow our wild heart.
We are too busy securing a safe and secure lifestyle and our place amidst a society that, in all honesty, does not care too much about us in the first place. Our work has become the exemplified struggle for this safety. As such, it also has become the antithesis of the hero’s journey.
To be a hero means to face the odds of the self. What do I mean by this? It means that all the teachings of the greatest myths and stories are just here to encourage us to walk through the door and start our journey to our true self: To rediscover what we are about, to abandon the false self we have adopted early in our lives, to slay the dragons that keeps us “safe” and finally emerge into the light of the world fully conscious of our purpose, our tools and our path.
That which makes a great hero is the same as what makes a modern-day pioneer, a trailblazer and leader- wisdom of the self, knowing your unique potential and obligation in this life. That is what creates conviction and the desire to act. We all know these people. They enter a room and fill it with their presence. They appear on global stages, share their truth and suddenly the world is not the same anymore. Their ideas, songs, projects, speeches make us pause for a moment and think. They make us change our behavior and reconsider things. That’s because they went on this most perilous but also natural of all adventures and connected with their truth, and now that they have this truth they have no choice but to share it, unapologetically.
A hero’s success is not the victory at the end because there is no end. A hero’s success is to show up as the hero of their story each and every day.
This is the reason why I compare happy, fulfilled living with the existence of a fruit tree: We have to go on a dangerous journey just to find out what kind of tree we are, what kind of fruit we are here to bear. Once we live in this knowledge, we have no other choice than to be that tree.
Knowing and owning who we are removes all questions and incertitude from our lives and makes it irrelevant to fight petty wars and measure ourselves up against anyone else because we are now walking in our own unique light.
A hero is self-reliant and self-dependent. She or he does not need the world to validate their existence and relevance. This simple yet difficult thing is the very definition of happiness. Think about it, happiness is what every story of mankind has ever been about, and will forever be about. We crave it. It is worth more than gold.
The first step in writing your story is acknowledging the lust and hunger you have to go on your life’s adventure.
