Finding Joe, Finding You

Published in the Idaho State Journal and Blackfoot Morning News week of October 2, 2011

It is my hope that with the release of the film “Finding Joe” by Patrick Takaya Solomon starting on September 30, more people will be able to find themselves.  Joseph Campbell, the subject of “Finding Joe,” found for us the common thread that leads the way to a better life and our most authentic selves. 

Joseph Campbell explored and explained the blueprint for the human condition; the words, diagrams, dreams, stories, legends, religions that interconnect every individual human being on the planet.  That map, within our collective psychological hard-drive, he called the Hero’s Journey. 

As a writer, speaker, consultant, and professor of Comparative Religion at Sarah Lawrence College, Campbell drew up the basic story, or “Monomyth,” that is the Hero’s Journey.  Which, once you understand it, you see everywhere.  Because it’s the story we see in most films, fiction, religion, comic books, myths and legends, with the same central character—you.

We are the person at the center of all those stories.  Those adventures happen to us.  Those challenges happen to us.  We encounter the same roadblocks and villains.  We are the hero in our own story—so how do you want your story to end? 

Campbell describes the formula, which is really pretty simple.  Follow the path that is the scariest one imaginable for you, if you haven’t already been forced upon it.  Which is the road that leads into the darkest and creepiest parts of the forest?  That’s the one you take.  There is a reason why these roads are typically the ones less traveled; who wants to die from fear? 

But Campell also shows us what happens next.  We meet allies.  We are greeted at the gates of the unknown.   Whether it’s wand-shopping in Diagon Alley, finding a ride at Mos Eisley Cantina, or tap-dancing with Munchkins at the start of the Yellow Brick Road, we are quickly shown we are not on the journey alone. 

Not that it’s ultimately any less terrifying.  After the Prancing Pony is Mount Doom.  And how do you survive the journey, to make it where you want to go?  In the story of our lives, how do we leave our abusive partner?  Start that business?  Cope with losing a job?  Follow your bliss, as Campbell said? 

Through “ trials and revelations,” Campbell states in his interviews with Bill Moyers in  “The Power of Myth.”  We have experiences along the way, good and bad, that teach us something about ourselves.  We learn we have hidden strengths.  We learn we’re smarter than we thought.  We grow stronger and more resilient every time we pick ourselves off the floor, no matter how hard we fell.  “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure,” Campbell says. 

There’s great reward in getting to the end of the journey and claiming our treasure, except there’s usually a huge dragon guarding it.  That smelly, snarly, lethal animal is our ego.  It’s us getting in our own way.  So, how do we evolve emotionally to claim what we deserve?  Letting go, building trust, asking for help, making important changes.  And, having faith. 

As long as we are alive, there is light at the end of every darkness.  And that light, often times, is coming from a disco ball at the huge party of your better, bigger life that waits on the other side of your scariest thing imaginable.  Campbell explains we all have the strength and stamina for our own heroic journeys, and we can rely on stories of humankind to point the way.  Onward!  

Nancy Goodman is a licensed counselor with an emphasis on life and career coaching.  Nancy can be reached at 406-3234 or goodnanc@yahoo.com.  http://vocatusidaho.blogspot.com.