Coming Through the Fire: Your Road Less Traveled

By the time you reach your senior year in high school, it dawns on you that this life offers no easy path. You discovered the only way to succeed academically or athletically: study your butt off and/or practice your sport until your body felt like a speed-bag in a boxing gym. You learned that a lot of folks want to climb over you for the star-studded spot on the cheerleading squad or president of the senior class.

You also learned that some guys and gals like to mess with your mind, break your heart and out-do you socially, academically, athletically and financially. Status! Prestige! Bragging rights!

Welcome to the human “race” or what some call the lifelong road of challenges to your destination. “What end of the line?” you ask.

Answer: aspiring to a fulfilling, meaningful and happy life.

Upon graduation from high school, you face exiting your home either via college, Peace Corps, military service or a job. As it stands, you want to explore your world, your options and your possibilities.

When I traveled to college 1,000 miles away from my home, I sat in the window of my dorm room that first night—and cried my eyes out. Loss of security and constancy causes anguish for every teenager entering the adult world. You must make decisions, take chances and go it alone.

No matter how many texts, emails or phone calls—you must conduct yourself with actions that further your life. If you sit on your butt, you face life’s responses for idle living. One thing about life: it doesn’t care what you do, but it responds to your actions with brutal honesty. If you take action, you benefit. If you do little, you face scant results.

In effect, you walk down the road of your own “Hero’s Journey.” Along the way, you may garner a supporting cast of friends. They boost you toward your goals. You may be a person who boosts someone else in his or her journey.

Most people aspire to average lives. You may be one of them. If so, you take a job, fall in love, raise kids and retire to your television set until you die. As long as it works for you, good choice.

On the other hand, some “Hero’s Jou
eymen” such as Colonel Sanders at Kentucky Fried Chicken, didn’t aspire to living a compelling career until late in life. Some start in middle age because they see a great wrong like the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with Civil Rights. Still others started right out of the blocks like Jane Goodall working with primates in Africa. Others like Susan B. Anthony led the suffragettes because she wanted to empower women with the vote.

Today, we see “Hero’s Jou
eymen and Women” in America and around the world—start their journey whenever they saw a need to take action. Twenty year old Chad Pregracke, www.LivingLandsandWaters.org , decided to clean up the Mississippi River. Forty year old Angela Pozzi, artist, www.WashedAshore.org , decided to bring attention to the Earth’s oceans becoming a toilet for humanity’s plastics.

Remember this: Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, needed the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow to get back to Kansas with her dog Toto. She couldn’t succeed on her own. Every hero needs help from friends, family and strangers.

Other hero’s struggles:

• In Star Wars, Luke fights his way forward to save Princess Leia and then to destroy the Death Star. When Obi-Wan fights Darth Vader, it is a form of Brother Battle.

• In Lord of the Rings, Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring face many trials on the way to the final goal of destroying the ring.

Take the long view! Remember this point during your journey: all your failures, sweat, blood and tears come into play for your final victory—whatever you choose it to be at whatever time in your life. The small tests gave you courage. They hardened you to not sweat the little things and helped you overcome the big challenges.

On your “road less traveled”; you bring unique tools of body, mind and spirit to the journey. You bring aptitude, altitude and attitude to the mix. Use all your experiences to reach your highest and best along the road of your life.

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