The pointless hero’s journey

Better him than me. (Image by Lothar Dieterich)

I have trouble writing fiction, and I discovered a key reason when I attempted to do NaNoWriMo: I don’t like to make bad things happen to my characters.

I don’t want to break their hearts. I don’t even want to inconvenience them.

I mean, Dorothy Gale goes to all of that trouble to get to the Wizard of Oz only to discover that she had the power to get back to Kansas the whole time. And then, once she comes full circle, her key insight is that Kansas isn’t so bad after all. I guess she grew from her experiences, but she went through a lot of pain only to wind up exactly where she started from.

I have a hard time with that. How do I know that my protagonist isn’t just going on a lot of pointless errands?

And what are the implications for real life? When you heed the call to adventure and undertake the hero’s journey, how can you be sure that it’s worth the hassle?

Many of us have bought into the notion that doing especially difficult things is virtuous and highly valuable. That’s not wrong, but that doesn’t mean that every difficult thing we do is then virtuous and highly valuable. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man aren’t necessarily going to show up and help you on your quest. You might be struggling at something you don’t like, that you’re not particularly well suited to, and that nobody cares about (for example, me writing a novel). Better to use your finite time and energy to do something that might be just as difficult but more useful to you and others.

Just because something is hard doesn’t make it meaningful. We might put our heart and soul into something and never see it pay off. There is no guarantee that our blood, sweat, and tears will benefit anyone.

If we want to avoid a life of frustration, we can be more discerning. We don’t have to shy away from hard work, but we can be choosy about what kind of hard work. We can go deeper into something we’re already good at instead of slogging away hopelessly at something we feel like we should be good at. No additional points will be awarded for misery.

I have always worked in service-based businesses because I get energized by talking to people. I love phone calls. I love hearing people’s stories. I love collaboration. I love teaching classes and leading training sessions. I even enjoy public speaking.

I believe that it would be a big mistake for me to give up all of this connection and conversation to live alone in a cabin in the woods for a year and write a philosophical treatise. I imagine that my well of ideas would run dry pretty quickly when not surrounded by fellow humans. It would be intensely difficult, and unnecessarily so.

Maybe my description of myself as a people person caused you to feel a momentary pang of dread or inadequacy. If you’re not like me, good! You don’t have to be. The world needs you, exactly as you are. You might relish the idea of a cabin in the woods where no one can bother you. No need for you to go on a pointless hero’s journey that requires you to talk on the phone for three hours a day. I’m sure you can find something that will stretch you in a way that you are excited about, as opposed to choosing an activity that leaves you a spent, dry husk of a person.

Life brings enough suffering and difficulty. There are many journeys we are obligated to take, whether we want to or not. Therefore, when we do have a choice, we ought to pick the endeavors that we will find enjoyable and interesting and allow us a path toward success as we define it. We’ll be at our best, and we’ll be able to offer our best to others. And when we arrive back where we started, we’ll find that we can’t wait to get going again for the next round.