Joseph Campbell was an author who studied and identified the traits common to many stories across human history. They come from the Bible, literature, mythology and legend. He documented what he called the Hero’s Journey. Many of his elements are touched on throughout our Heroic Journal experience. The first step on Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is called the Call to Adventure. But his journey is a cycle and we are still working to become heroic. So the only place we can begin is where we are now, and that may be different for each of us.
In movies and literature the characters experience an inciting incident, which is the disruption that forces or invites the character to leave their current way of life. This causes them to begin their journey through which the characters face challenges and grow, making it impossible to return to where they were before. Frodo decides at the Council of Elrond that he will carry the ring. Luke finds the princess’s message in R2-D2 and sets off to find old Ben Kenobi. And in the Matrix, when Neo swallows the red pill, he chooses to forever leave life as he’s known it.
What makes it a quest rather than a burden or a misfortune is the choice. The character could refuse. Many do, at first. The refusal of the call is its own archetype, the reluctant hero. This character runs, or bargains, citing a long list of reasons why someone else would do better. But your quest does not go away because you refuse it. It waits, often growing more urgent, until the cost of refusing becomes higher than the cost of answering.
The Quest in your heroic story is not about grand gestures or dramatic moments. It is acknowledging the fact that you were made for something bigger. It is the frustrated feeling that there is more, that you are capable of more, that the life you are living is somehow smaller than the life you were designed for. That feeling is your signal, to grow.
The question is not if you have a quest. The question is, “are you willing to answer it?”