The Simple Answer to Purpose | Letter to a Friend #5

Hey friend,

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Whew. This has been an interesting week. I feel like I've talked enough about what happened, so if you don't know here's a video on how my most vulnerable video was made into a meme and laughed at by 2+ million people.

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What I want to talk about today instead is based on the hero's journey, a term coined by mythologist Joseph Campbell. Briefly, Campbell found that all myths/stories share the same archetypal path, from Star Wars to Christianity, and that this finding can be applied to our own lives to help us live more meaningful lives. That's a very poor summary, and I highly recommend watching his free documentary called Finding Joe instead of listening to me, but it's good enough for now.

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One of the primary elements of the so-called hero's journey is the "call to adventure": The thing that pulls you from your regular life into a new adventure that is simultaneously exciting and incredibly scary. Long story short, I feel I just had a call to adventure, and now I'm freaked out but incredibly excited simultaneously.

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I feel a call to not only continue to be more open, vulnerable and honest about my own experience growing up, but to do everything I can to meaningfully contribute to reducing the polarity and division that is growing in our societies, particularly in the U.S. My dad ran away from it and took his family with him as he believed it to be too late to do anything about it. Maybe that is true, but I have a feeling that even if it is, trying to help and failing is going to be more meaningful than surviving on my own on a farm and waiting it out.

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But I don't want this to just be about me. What I want is for you, too, my friend, to feel this excitement and deep meaning in life, and the only way I think any of us have a shot at this is by facing our fears. I've said it before, particularly in an early video called "The Timeless Answer to 'What Should I Do?'", but if you're looking for meaning, purpose, passion, etc. in your life look no further than what you're most afraid of doing.

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I'm committed to truly using fear as a compass moving forward, and I hope you do the same.

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I'll end it with a quote from Joseph Campbell: "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."

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What cave do you fear? Give it a lil look around - I promise you won't regret it.

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Much love,
Ryan