Thinking Out Loud ~ Don’t Fear the Adventure

Joseph Campbell says in Reflections on the Art of Living in speaking of the heroes journey, “When one thinks of some reason for not going, or has fear, and remains in society, because it safe, the results are radically different from what happens when one follows a call. If you refuse to go, then you are someone else’s servant. When this refusal of the call happens, there is a kind of drying up, a sense of life lost. Everything in you knows that are required adventure has been refused. Anxiety build up. What you have refused to experience in a positive way, you will experience in a negative way. P 78

Note: When we refuse the call to go on the journey, we make excuses. We rationalize why it is safer not to go then to go. I have had colleagues who had wonderful opportunities where they could have made a big difference who refused to answer their call because they were afraid. They made elaborate excuses and they said, “I could have, I would have, but they didn’t. They lost their great adventure in that moment. Don’t fear the adventure.