The shape of the story

In 1949 a literature professor named Joseph Campbell, who'd spent years reading the myths of every culture he could find, published The Hero with a Thousand Faces with a claim that's since been used by screenwriters, therapists and a great many people trying to understand their own lives: all the stories are one story. The hero's journey, he called it, though I'll call it the hero's road.

The shape: a call to adventure, usually refused at first. A threshold crossed, from the known world into the unknown. Helpers and a mentor met along the way. Trials. An ordeal at the center, a death of some kind, real or symbolic. A gift won. And the return, bringing the gift back to the ordinary world, which is the part most people skip and Campbell said was the point.

The structure has been criticized, fairly, for being too neat and too male, and Campbell's claim that every culture tells it the same way doesn't entirely hold. What holds is the use of it. People make meaning of their lives by telling them as stories, and the shape of the story they tell determines what they can see. Tell your life as a series of accidents and that's what you'll find. Tell it as a road with a call, a crossing, an ordeal and a return, and the same facts become a path.

It's the last key of this stretch of the fourth month because it hands you the frame for all the material you've gathered: the life review, the letter, the four days of writing. Put them in Campbell's shape and ask: what was the call? Where was the threshold? What was the ordeal, and what did it give you? And what's the return, the gift you bring back to the people you came from?

A hundred and nineteen days ago, a letter arrived. That was a call. You crossed on day one. You're somewhere in the middle of the road.