THE HERO

The Hero’s Journey is a concept that many fiction writers utilize to create characters and plots to tell stories.

The theory isn’t new; though many researchers, for instance Joseph Campbell and Scott Vogler to name a few, have broken down the idea and have written different perspectives with different titles on the subject. Here is a quick, basic rundown of the Journey.

The Hero is in her normal world reality, then something happens and she gets thrust into a new situation or new world. The idea of new world could represent a literal geographic location, or the same town but now the Hero must integrate into a new social group in order to reach her ultimate goal. The Hero meets people on her journey, some of them are good, some are bad. She then must decide how she fits into the new group or new world by slowly stripping away her old way of thinking from the normal world and is forced to adapt and move forward with all the new concepts she is learning.

It’s pretty safe to say that there must be a super bad guy who gets in the way of the goal and the Hero must enter in her inner most cave, her conscious, to find the best means to rid herself of this bad person. The whole process follows the concept of one step forward, two steps back because the Hero must lose some of her old self in order to grow into the Hero she was meant to become.

Bla, bla, bla, the Hero faces her nemesis, yatta, yatta, yatta. She wins, and bam, the old world is seen from a rear-view mirror and now the Hero begins life all over again from a different perspective. Let’s cheers to the win.

You may be asking yourself, “Why on earth are you telling me this?” Well, once again, I have a reason. You might not agree with my reasoning, but ultimately, it makes sense in my head and that’s all that matters.

Think about if each and every one of us is the Hero to our own story. What is your ultimate goal? Your ultimate dream? Who is the nemesis stopping you from reaching that goal?

Here’s a crazy idea. What if the only bad guy blocking our path toward forward progress, or up that ladder, is actually someone we conjured up in our own minds? What if we created this troll-like fictional character to push us backward?

In story terms, let’s say you’ve recently taken one step forward and was pushed twelve steps back and off a cliff into an oblivion of a foreign world. In this new realm, you are thrust into a new way of thinking, a new world. This is the time to slowly strip yourself of old habits and move forward with a new way of thinking; except this new place isn’t fun. It’s scary and there you stand, at the bottom of that ravine, far from the cliff you just plunged off of. With fear coursing through your veins, you look in every possible direction to get back up to where you started.

You so desperately want to live and thrive on that mountain top but all its once-glory is blocked by the bad guy. And he’s a mirrored reflection of you. Did you just save yourself from the agony of unavoidable defeat? Or are you afraid of success? True success is scary. It means getting out of your comfort zone and battling different kinds of antagonists.

One particular lyric in a Goo Goo Dolls song, “Sometimes you don’t know when your dreams are coming true,” is pretty powerful. Maybe the push off into oblivion is part of the bigger picture. Is it as simple as one step at a time? How will you decide which route to take? Have you lost some old part of yourself in order to grow into the Hero you were meant to become? I’m not an exception to this ferocious internal battle. If all goes according to plan, a huge neon blinking sign will hang from the heavens pointing me in the right direction to travel. For now, I think I’ll just stand here in this mountainous basin for a while, smell the lilacs, and watch birds circle overhead. Maybe I’ll even stop thinking about what I’m supposed to do and just breathe—all while anticipating the Hero winning Cheers.