The hero's journey

What does it take to be a hero?

What’s come to be called “the hero’s journey” is a pattern of behavior typical to hero myths across cultures and over time.

Follow that pattern, and you can be a hero, Many of us are heroes, without knowing we are.

The way I see it, I’m surrounded by heroes.

From time to time, I’ve been a hero.

Now it’s time to up my game and spend more time in hero mode.

What makes a hero?

Joseph Campbell’s book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” documents and analyzes the cross-cultural pattern of the hero’s journey. Campbell’s work was known to scholars and popularized when Bill Moyers interviewed Campbell and discussed his work and the way that George Lucas had used it to guide his story-telling in the Star War series.

According to Campbell, the hero’s journey can take as many as 17 distinct stages. Not every hero-story covered all seventeen and “some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order.”

In “Maps of Meaning,” Jordan Peterson distills the hero’s journey this way:

The world is made up of explored territory and unexplored territory—of order and chaos. The hero who voluntarily leaves explored territory to confront chaos, gain something valuable and to bring it back.

The hero’s goal is to reduce the scope of chaos and expand the realm of order.

The hero doesn’t do it for personal gain but in service to something greater than himself (or herself.)

The hero undertakes the journey voluntarily.

Success is not guaranteed. But it’s not success or failure that makes one a hero: it’s voluntarily going on the journey.

We’re surrounded by heroes

Many unremarkable take the hero’s path. They surround us.

Everyone who joins the military is on a hero’s journey. They leave home and family and face the unexplored territory of their new career. If they volunteer for duty in an alien and hostile land, they are even more heroic. They might hope to gain peace and order, or defeat an enemy who threatens their community or to grow as individuals by voluntary sacrifice to face danger. That’s the hero’s journey.

It doesn’t always work out well. Some heroes die. Some are wounded and come back addicted or crippled. But even when the journey fails, it’s still the hero’s journey.

Heroism is not just for the military. When young people leave home to go to college or embark on their careers, they’re also on a hero’s path. They leave the safety of the familiar, head into the unknown and come back changed—for the better if they succeed, and sometimes for the worse. But they are heroes for undertaking the journey.

Anyone who starts a new career or a new business is on a hero’s journey. The fact that the unexplored territory is entirely within the boundaries society’s well-explored territory doesn’t matter. It’s unexplored by the person setting out. If the hero succeeds, then society is better off. The entrepreneur’s family is better off. The new business’s customers are better off.

Falling in love is a hero’s journey. You must leave the explored territory of your old life and face the unexplored territory of The Other. You must meet problems in the relationship, negotiate good agreements, make sacrifices for the sake of your partner and the greater good of the relationship. All are common, yet heroic acts.

When a couple has a baby (the old fashioned way) the woman is always on a hero’s journey—the man may join her, or not. When women choose to bear a child, they face death. It’s less frequent than in the past, but the threat is always there. Women sacrifice their bodies to a nine months-long journey into unexplored territory. They face increasing discomfort that may end with hours of pain or with someone cutting open their bodies to bring a new life into the world,

In the old days when most jobs were dangerous and held by men, a man had to be a hero to provide. Today, men don’t need to be heroes—but they can choose to be. Most men can’t be as heroic as every woman has to be—but if they want to be heroes, they can try.

The unheroic

What’s not heroic? People across time and cultures agree.

People who live ordinary lives, who never venture into the unknown, who never take on challenges are not heroes. There’s little that’s heroic about being a bureaucrat.

Criminals venture into the unknown and face challenges, but they bring nothing back to the community. They take from it. There’s nothing heroic about criminality.

People who act responsibly and those who defend their lives and property because they must are not a hero. To be a hero you must to willingly venture into the unknown, and to take on more than necessity dictates. You have to make a sacrifice to be a hero. We need people who are responsible and maintain the status quo, but they are not heroes.

People who stand up for their friends and neighbors are heroes. They willingly take on an unnecessary burden. People who stand up for themselves are virtuous, but not heroes.

I want to be a hero

I want to be a hero to my kids, my community, my friends. Even if they don’t call me a hero, I will know I am a hero if I follow the hero’s path.

I’ve been a hero in the past. I can be one again.

I quit my job and started my business so that I could work from home and support my wife and kids. It was a leap into the unknown. It was nearly twenty years of continuous struggle, some failures, and some success. And now, I see that struggle as heroic.

I’ve had other episodes of heroism and different periods that were not so heroic.

Then came retirement, greater ease and not so much heroism.

That’s going to change.

Doing what is meaningful

Jordan Peterson’s Rule 7: “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.” That points toward living a heroic life.

I still take on challenges, but not as many as I could. I still bear burdens, but not as many as I can carry.

My life has meaning, but there are parts of my life that can have more meaning if I connect them to a hero’s journey.

I can be more courageous and challenge myself to get back on the hero’s path.

I can look at the work that I’ve started doing in my community as a small exercise in personal heroism. I’ve been stepping out of familiar territory and venturing into the unknown to benefit others. That’s hero work.

I can see other places where I can be more of a hero.

Written with the help of StackEdit, Grammarly, Markdown Here,Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

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