THE HERO'S JOURNEY

I don't remember this, but when I was fifteen, I decided to move overseas, or so my dad says. I am not sure why I would have thought of going far away at that young age. Maybe it had to do with my parents' quiet divorce and my mom's shaky new marriage that followed. I'm sure it also had to do with growing up in a communist country where everyone dreamed to get away, if for nothing else, to see what was beyond the tightly locked Romanian borders.

I was a nerd on the outside and a rebel on the inside. When I was about twelve, I learned to knit, a typical pastime of older women back then. When I was seventeen, I set a ridiculous goal for myself: to knit a sweater each month. I also loved to read, and I taught myself to knit whilst also reading. My mom, an extremely sociable person, often had people over for dinner. I remember hiding in my bedroom while voices resounded from our little kitchen, and do my knit/read routine. One time my godmother came in to check out my weird new sport, and nicknamed me Napoleon, for doing many things at the same time. By the end of the year, I had knitted 10 sweaters and am not sure what I ended up doing with them. It was an accomplishment I sure was proud of, although I had the sense to not brag much about it.

After college, I left for the US for a year-long internship, and ended up not returning home. Despite the big move, or I should say because of it, the first year in the US felt like I had won the lottery. At the age of 24 I was in New York City, working at the 43rd floor of a sky scraper, and had a view of the Twin Towers when eating my lunch. My English was improving, and after a couple of lonely years when I was scraping by, I got into business school and met my soulmate.

Many years later, when I had slowly climbed my way up in the corporate world and earned many figures in salary and stock options, I started to feel a sense of lack of satisfaction that seems to arrive for many, at age 40. I was married and still in love, I had small perfect children, a great little house in San Francisco, vacations every year, and a few close, supportive friends. When a new dream is about to be born, certain questions always precede it. I started to question my career, my reasons for doing it, and how it made me feel. I questioned where I lived, my reasons for being there, and whether it was the place I wanted to raise my children. I questioned how I spent my time, and whether there was another way to allocate time for work vs. time for my kids vs. time for myself. I questioned my own motives and my values. I feared I believed one thing and did the other.

Up until then, the story I had been telling myself had been one of a successful immigrant, of a lucky girl. Over time the pieces of that story started to chip away, and the story I told myself reshaped in my subconscious into an increasingly negative one. The hero of my new story morphed from a strong-minded, determined girl, to a middle-aged woman with no direction, who followed blindly a path carved by those ahead of her. The hero had become stale, with no adventures and treasures to chase. It had become a victim of the stories told by others, stories which had featured rather shallow goals for one's path. I was confused by the lack of satisfaction I felt. I thought there was something wrong with me.

Over time, as I began to untangle my feelings, I began to notice my habit to beat myself up and compare myself to others. Ironically, I beat myself up for feeling dissatisfied. How come others in my situation were satisfied and I was not?

I looked around and listened. People at work either felt the same, or didn't open up about their own struggles. In between meetings, some did open up about their frustrations with the way the company was run, their limitations to have a real impact on the company. There was one thing we all of agreed on: we were working too many hours, and had too little time for anything outside of work. I hooked on that idea, and the rebel inside me made a new goal: to get out of the overworked, full time corporate world, and seek something more meaningful. I'm here for a reason, I kept thinking. This can't be it.

We rented out our house for more than the mortgage, and generated a steady, yet much smaller, income stream. We left San Francisco and our full time jobs, and went back to Romania for a year to reset. We were now living a chapter I never imagined or hoped for. It felt as if we were on the outside of the "normal" world, following an entire different path with no markings or directions, one with unpredictable peaks and valleys. We were sometimes happy, lucky campers, other times scared travelers who made new trails in a foreign land with no tools. We felt smart and lucky at best of times, and lost at worst of times.

When we returned to San Francisco, I had developed the germs of a new way of thinking about myself. A whole new story was emerging, one in which I was a new kind of hero. I became aware of and accepted my rebellious nature. So about 4 years ago, I opened my own market research shop, started working as a freelance consultant doing reduced hours work, spent more time with my growing kids, and started writing about happiness.

To be happy is to know yourself. To know yourself, is to question your path and your values. To question your path is to create space for the unknown, the unexpected, the creative space which lies just beneath the surface. To create space is to accept our true nature, and express that which needs to be brought to life. That expression of ourselves might manifest itself in innumerable ways, one of which will be ours and only ours, at that particular time.

It's summertime, and my family and I are back to my parents' country house in Transylvania. As I reflect on the time we moved here for a year a few years ago, I am reminded of all the small ways in which we must move away from the kind of life we believe we should live, and move toward the kind of life we must allow ourselves to dream of. In a sense, happiness is simple, in that it requires listening to and following our inner desires. In truth, happiness is complex, in that it requires an endless dance of questioning and of accepting things. It requires tending to our true, ever changing needs, as well as pausing and being content with where we are. It requires that we dig deep with the tools of honesty and hope, and redirect our steps toward our own path, on which we discover ourselves to feel joyful, in awe, and fully alive.

“You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else's path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else's way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.” 
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey