What is Your Journey?

My friend Juan Velasco has said that writing and “reflecting on the different stages of your life, can dramatically improve your understanding of yourself and others.”

From earliest human history, throughout all world cultures, we have told our stories. Huddled around the campfire or sleeping under the stars, our ancestors passed down the stories that define us as human beings.

Joseph Campbell (1968) traced the mythic pattern of the hero’s journey—the courageous individual who leaves the known world for the great unknown, returning with a treasure to share with the larger community. Although some scholars see this as a masculine model of self-definition, I see the hero’s journey repeated in each of our lives. From the journeys of Odysseus to Dante’s Divine Comedy, the vision quests of Native Americans, to Thoreau living “deliberately” at Walden Pond to courageous individuals in recent times—Jacques Cousteau’s journeys to the ocean depths, Margaret Mead’s research in Samoa, Jane Goodall’s discoveries among the chimps in Africa—these journeys give us all a greater understanding of ourselves and our world.

The journey is ever present, yours and mine. Whenever we venture from the known to the great unknown—whether facing a new challenge or reaching out to explore a new opportunity, we take the hero’s journey, discovering valuable treasures along the way.

Take a few moments now to reflect on your own journey.

• When did you last leave your familiar path to enter the great unknown?
• What challenge did you face?
• What treasure did you discover?
• What did you learn about yourself?

Take a deep breath. Pause to give thanks for this experience as you recognize the deeper patterns of meaning in the ongoing journey of your life.

Reference

Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. (Originally published 1949).