Today, I burned the Boats

Today, I burned the boats

In any epic story, there is a Hero, who sets out on an adventure, learns a lot of things, and returns home transformed. This theme is so prevalent across storytelling in all cultures, that a professor by the name of Joseph Campbell termed it “The Hero’s Journey”. It is also sometimes referred to as the “Monomyth”.

Watch any movie, Disney cartoon, or television series, and you begin to see this pattern emerge. The hero starts out ordinary, with ordinary problems. He or she eventually comes across something new, something that requires them to make a decision to leave their mundane existence.

At first, they put it off, preferring to stay in their ordinary world. But then, by either coincidence or magic, something happens that is so big, their only choice is to leave everything they know behind and set out on the adventure of the Hero’s journey.

You know this moment well. It is when Hagrid finally shows up on Harry Potter’s 11 th birthday, after the Dursleys refused to give Harry the Hogwarts letter. It is when Bilbo Baggins, after refusing Gandalf’s request to leave on an adventure, finally relents and leaves his life behind. It is when Luke Skywalker refuses to go save princess Leia with Obi-wan Kenobi, then returns home to find everything destroyed.

The turning point is a before/after moment. One moment, you are in your life as you’ve known it, and the next, you can never go back. Or at least, the barrier to go back is so large, it might as well be insurmountable.

Today, I undertook something like this. In the movie of my life, I experienced a before/after moment. I didn’t realize it was what I was doing until I hung up the phone, and then it hit me. I burned the boats.

There’s no going back now. Not without an enormous amount of work, pain, or irritation, anyway. What did I do?

I put my license into retirement.

Just writing that sentence made my heart beat a lot faster.

I have been a dentist for almost twenty years. I remember the blood, sweat, and tears it took to achieve that tiny bit of paper that certified me as a professional, permitting me to practice. The enormous cost of time and money and mental bandwidth that I dedicated to this thing is still clear in my mind.

But, there comes a point at which each of us has to look at the world that has become ordinary to us and see the call to adventure for what it is. To see ourselves as the “hero” or the main character of our own story.

The longings of our heart might be calling to us to do something else…and maybe it’s something so wild, something so different, that staying put seems much safer. The call might be a new opportunity, a new and different job/role, a sudden interest. And every time we push it down, we are denying the chance to set out on an adventure and become the Hero of our own story.

I think it comes down to being willing to be wrong, or look different. And when the stakes are high, when you make a change so big that you can’t go back, well, refusal of the call feels right.

Until it doesn’t.

Continual refusal of the call isn’t a refusal of something “out there” but rather it is a refusal of all of the potential you already have. No one can do that for any period of time without consequences. Ask me how I know.

I stayed in a job much longer than I should have. The end result? Worsening health. I thought I was doing the right thing by earning a big paycheck. But it turns out I had to repress so many other aspects of myself that I eventually had to spend quite a bit of money getting my health back.

I’ve seen this happen to others, not only with health, but with relationships, with their life circumstances. And maybe this sounds illogical, but I think there is some type of magic that plays out when we know we are refusing ourselves. The very things that we hold dear are suddenly shaken up so badly that we simply MUST pay attention.

So, the stakes may look high to accept the adventure…but they are equally high if you refuse.

Full disclosure? I could have simply let my license lapse, a passive move towards achieving the same inactive status. But to me, it wouldn’t have been the same.

I called my licensing department, I told them I was retiring, I made my license inactive. I drew a line in the sand as my consent back to the call. As a symbol that I am ready for adventure. Because, no matter how strange it might be, I know the stakes either way. And I’d rather look the call in the face and say “let’s do this” than wait for it to play out another way.

The call to adventure nags at each of us. It’s in there, occasionally popping up to whisper to you. It will never seem like a good time or a good idea. It will likely stir up feelings of fear, of “what will everyone think?” Just remember, you have the free will to confront those uncomfortable feelings and at least give the call a little room to make a case. The stakes are high either way.

This time, I knew I had make the leap. I had to burn the boats. I had to embrace the potential that lies on the journey ahead.