The Journey Home From The Hero’s Journey

            Throughout our journey, we have developed an addiction to our own heroism. It’s not a bad thing. But as when we faced our demons and came out of our cave on the other side, we were reborn into a new creature, and the life that emanated from us in that moment brings with it an irresistible drive to continue on with it through the succession of minutes that will comprise the rest of our lives. In order to accomplish this task of living in a continued state of heroism, we must dedicate ourselves to it.

            Though we have completed our initial course, we will be eternally ready to stand as the heroes that we have become. We hold victory in our hearts and will accept nothing less in any venture that comes our way. We dedicate ourselves to heroism. We dedicate ourselves to valor. We dedicate ourselves to excellence.

            When we are called to return home, to go back to the life we lived before our adventure, we are often reluctant. As we have dedicated ourselves to heroism, we can surely rationalize how the doldrums of our old lives would do nothing to contribute to our new way of thinking and new mode of living. However, with a deep breath of contemplation, we realize that the journey of the hero is not in our outside endeavors, but  in our hearts where our valor and the convictions of our conscience create the characters we truly are.

            So we return to the life we once knew, but we don’t return to the same type of living. There is a simultaneous spring in our step and purpose in our gait. There is a newfound interest in everything that we have seen before, as if we are seeing it for the first time. And indeed, we are seeing the place again for the first time. Because we are new creatures, wiser, stronger, and more able than ever before.

There is the temptation to forget this and to truly return to life as it was before our victory. There is the temptation to look at the outward world, to see that nothing has changed in it, and to forget about the change that has occurred within us. We must remember that who we are lies within and emanates from there. As we return to the world we once knew, let us bring the change they are longing for.