Take a tune that starts with ‘C,’ technically in the middle but still just beginning. Roll it around in a couple of flats and repeat. Over and over, the same melody.

Take a path that is familiar. Walk the same trodden dirt and the same cobbled streets. Have a coffee at exactly nine and another at three. Eat lunch at noon and hope your seat is free. 

Do it over and over until the rhythm is ground into your bones, and you feel it in your knees when you stand from your desk at five-thirty. Walk, drive, or ride home and settle down to sleep. 

Have you learned it yet? That complacency? 

Does it feel like enough? 

It should, shouldn’t it?

Ten-year-old me has been staring into my dreams, wondering where everything went wrong. Where’s my Hero’s Journey? 

‘Adventure is calling!’ is posted on cars. ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!’ on school walls.  ‘Adventure is out there!’ is next to ‘#blessed.’

Where? 

Does adventure hide in the hollow under my desk or in the cracks of the sidewalk on my way to class? Does it sit behind the spare register tape at work, or is it guarded by the ghost that sometimes unplugs the fridge? Where do I get an adventure between three shifts a week?

For a hero to grow, they have to leave. Until then, I’m stuck in a loop, a story stagnated and incomplete. 

But I could be a fool. The itch is just under my nails, between flashcards and bleach. Get in the car and drive until everything is new, step over the ledge and see what catches me. That cliff keeps getting closer. 

I would be a fool, and I know it would be easy. As easy as ink under my skin and smoke in my lungs. A destruction so beautiful, there’s no way to repeat. 

Start in the key of ‘G,’ then stop playing the melody. Step away from the set and pristine.

So what if it’s a Fool’s Journey?