The Journeyman

I was just reading a friend's blog in which she mentioned Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. I'm a big Joe Campbell fan mostly because I love story and I think its brilliant that he went out there and figured out why story resonates with people. Thanks, Joe! In her post, my friend commented that she likes to think about the Hero's Journey and how it applies to real life. How each of us should be looking for our blissful path. Which reminded me of my favorite poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I read it probably back in sixth grade, and it resounded with me even back then. And it continues to resound with me today. Sometimes, in fact, I think that this poem gave me the courage to make some of my more inspired decisions which great art should. In case you're not familiar with it:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I've used this road analogy a lot throughout my life, maybe because of this poem. But it's always felt appropriate in trying to explain the way I feel. For instance, I often wonder if I'm on the right "path" in life. I wonder where my Free Will and my Destiny "intersect." Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck "in a jam" and I crave movement. And other times I feel like I'm being angrily swept up "in the flow." I've said in the past that I feel like everyone else is on the superhighway while I'm taking the surface road right next to it, looking for the on ramp.

I don't know if there is a path we're supposed to take. This is where Campbell comes in. He says, No. I don't know if there are experiences we're supposed to have. My religion says, Yes. And according to that religion, all will be revealed at the end of the journey. But until then I'm just supposed to keep moving. Looking for the things that make me blissful. Of course, this is not a particularly easy task nor one I'm particularly fond of. It seems awfully risky to keep moving without GPS or at the very least a Thomas Guide. When I look forward, down the road, if you will, I become a worried mess, terrified of putting a foot wrong. I don't trust very easily, not even myself it seems. I want to believe that I can reserve "the first" road. That I can go back to it. If I need it. But If I've learned one thing in my 30+ years it is is this: No matter where I put that foot, I'm going to be just fine. I just have to trust in the movement.

Some people have assumed that Frost's last line implies that he's happy he didn't take the first road. He's tickled he's taken the second. But I've always felt that he's neither proud nor blissed out. The word sigh gives it away. I think he's content. Satisfied. The journey was good. And it's the journey that matters.