It is clear that Homer’s epic poem about Odysseus’ long and arduous journey home from Troy still strikes a chord with many in 2026. But why do the misadventures of an Ithacan warrior written almost 3000 years ago still feel relevant to our very modern lives? Is some element of his story still our story?
In “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” Joseph Campbell characterises the main elements of all human stories as following a set narrative whose fundamental aspects are repeated throughout world mythologies and religions as well as in human psychology, reflected in Carl Jung’s work with archetypes. The hero’s journey is broadly split into three main stages: i) departure from the ordinary world, on a quest or adventure, ii) initiation i.e. learning the lessons of the path and overcoming challenges and iii) return to the ordinary world enriched by the lessons of the journey. In this instance, Odysseus leaves his ordinary world as leader of Ithaca and undergoes many horrific trials before arriving home again a wiser figure, more in tune with what matters to him and more reconciled to the forces of fate.
But the “hero’s journey” goes beyond great poems, books or films. Campbell’s stages can actually be found surprisingly often in our own daily lives and our individual quests, big or small. The world offers many “calls to adventure” and very often we, as the hero initially “refuse the call”. Logically, this makes sense as any action which requires us to move beyond our comfort zone and do things we do not feel capable of, qualified for or ready to do, will first be met with internal resistance. But it is sometimes surprising how often one miraculously “encounters a mentor”, someone who pushes you to at least attempt the adventure and “cross the first threshold”. These are all key aspects of the departure stage of Campbell’s three-part analysis.
How to find where we are in our own story?
We all constantly create stories because it’s the only way we can deal with a vast and chaotic reality. Sometimes, problems arise when we get stuck in unhelpful stories which restrict us from growing. Most importantly however, when it comes to our own story, it is nearly impossible to determine what belongs to beginning, middle or end. Campbell thus makes sense of the journey retrospectively, but that’s not much use when you find yourself standing at a crossroad of your life and don’t know which story you’re in.
Thus, Thomas Moore in “Dark Nights of the Soul” advocates a softer and more intuitive way of moving through our life stories which is in touch with their inherent uncertainty. The guides we need are not so much warriors like Odysseus but alternate ancient Greek figures such as the goddess Hekate. Hekate is the goddess of thresholds, transitions and the spaces between worlds. She is at home in the night and associated with crossroads, where an old path ends but a new one has not yet begun. While Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ shines a daylight clarity onto archetypal myths, Moore suggests we turn rather to night vision and feel our way.
It is this way of navigating our life story that Shankar Vedantam advocates in his TED-Talk “You don’t actually know what your future self wants”. It is clear retrospectively that our personalities and priorities have changed dramatically over time and that we no longer hold many of the values or ambitions of our younger selves. However, most people are less effective at applying this logic forward and recognising that their future self is likewise a radically different person to the one living today. Bence Nanay, in her TED-Talk on a similar theme links this to the “End of History” illusion. We like to assume that the person we are now is the authentic final version, unlike our silly youthful selves, but in reality we are all pretty bad at predicting who we might become. The advice of both talks is similar – we should view our future self as someone we don’t know that well yet and give them as much flexibility and diverse chances to emerge as we can. This doesn’t mean never making decisions in the present but allowing as much flexibility as possible and planning with humility, to allow space for the very different person we might become.
Whether we like it or not, we are the main character in our own hero’s journey, but unlike Odysseus, our story is not over, and we don’t have the benefit of hindsight. Campbell’s stages of the journey can be really useful in giving an indication as to where we are at and how to move the story forward. But maybe the greatest service we can do to our own life story may be to befriend the dark as Hekate does and to remain willing to cross thresholds whose destination we cannot yet see.
Leave a Reply