choices, journey

Step 42: The Hero’s Choice

This week Brian and I were talking through some personal choices I will need to make in the coming months. I’m having trouble deciding what to do – all of the options are fabulous. Poor, unfortunate me, right? Having to choose between fabulous and fabulous is a tough row to hoe.

Brian has a way of staring at me very directly as if to say, “seriously, this is what you’re worried about?” Then I start laughing, fall over to my side on the couch, and shake my head in wonder. If all else fails, I never have to worry about knowing how to entertain myself with my whirling, churning mind.

“Let me get a little Joseph Campbell on you,” Brian said. “The hero’s journey involves choices, and the nature of those choices must be difficult. Anyone can choose between a fantastic choice and a terrible choice. A hero, or heroine, has to make tough choices. That’s the nature of the hero’s journey.”

I sat with that thought for a while, turning it over and over in my mind. “I guess you’re right,” I conceded. “I can’t go wrong, can I?”

“No. May you always have a life where you have to choose between wonderful options,” Brian said.

“Let’s hope so, Brian,” I said.

“Forget hope. Let’s just make it happen.”

I laughed. “Yes. Let’s.”

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

adventure, art, journey

Traveling like Paulo Coelho

I’m hoping that the breezy days of summer have finally arrived. Though I don’t like the heat, the summer does bring with it a sense of dreaming and imaging our lives in new places. In many ways, it’s more of a renewal than spring – graduations, weddings, vacations. I find that a lot of my happiest memories happened during this season, and many of them happened when I traveled on my own.

Paulo Coelho wrote one of my favorite books, The Alchemist, and I love its celebration of the journey. Coelho seems to prize travel as the most valuable way to spend our time. It’s the best way to learn, about ourselves and the world around us. In addition to his many books on the subject, he now writes several blogs: WordPress (http://paulocoelhoblog.com), Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/paulocoelho) & Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paulo-Coelho/11777366210). He is equally present in media sharing sites such as Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=paulabraconnot) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulo_coelho/sets). He shares his thoughts with us, as well as his images.

On Amazon.com, he wrote recently wrote a post with some travel advice, giving us an idea of how he conducts the details of his travels. He avoids museums and hangs out in bars. He doesn’t buy material things, and he invests in the people around him, knowing that he understands them and they understand him, just by virtue of being human. In his quintessential Coelho style, he remains open to the magic that happens when we travel, when we get outside any sense of a comfort zone, and just allow life to happen. More than good advice about how to travel, he provides us with good advice on how to live.