the hero's journey

joseph campbell mapped every great myth in human history and found the same structure repeated endlessly: an ordinary person is called to adventure, faces trials, nearly breaks, and returns home transformed. he called it the monomyth. you're living it right now.

you are the hero

not in some cheesy motivational poster way. in a structural, narrative way. you have a current self and an ideal future self, and the distance between them is your journey. the obstacles, setbacks, and moments of doubt you face? those aren't interruptions to your story. they ARE your story.

the question isn't whether you're on a hero's journey. you are. the question is whether you're actively walking the path or sitting in the ordinary world refusing the call.

the call you keep ignoring

campbell identified a stage he called "refusal of the call." the hero hears the invitation to adventure and says no. fear wins. comfort wins. the known world — boring as it is — feels safer than the unknown.

sound familiar? that career change you've been thinking about for three years. that conversation you know you need to have. that version of yourself you can see clearly but refuse to pursue because the gap feels too wide.

every time you refuse the call, you don't stay the same. you shrink a little. the ordinary world gets smaller.

the journey never ends

here's what separates this from a fairy tale: there is no final destination. you don't slay the dragon and live happily ever after. your ideal self continuously evolves. the moment you reach one version, a new one appears on the horizon.

this isn't depressing. it's liberating. it means the point was never the destination. the point is the becoming. every trial, every failure, every dark night of the soul is forging you into someone you couldn't have imagined at the start.

answer the call

whatever you've been avoiding — whatever challenge you know you need to face — that's your call to adventure. you can refuse it again. you can stay comfortable for another month, another year, another decade.

or you can step across the threshold and see what happens. every hero in every story was terrified at this exact moment. they went anyway. that's what made them heroes.

if this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it.