Hero's Journey

I should have written this as my first article, but hey, better late than never, right?

You often ask me, “Why is your podcast or blog called HERO?”

Do I talk about superheroes or extraordinary characters who fight enemies and save damsels in distress?

Not exactly.

Or rather, yes, but not in the “canonical” way.

Since I lived in Australia—back in 2015, when I was sharing an apartment in Bondi Beach with my roommate—I noticed something curious that made me think about starting to tell stories.

Our apartment, a tiny one-and-a-half-room place two blocks from the beach, became a pilgrimage site for a multitude of colorful and diverse characters from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds: surfers, athletes, drug dealers, models, travelers, actors, international smugglers, restaurateurs—to name a few. Each of them had their own peculiarities and stories to tell. And since, at the time, I was consuming a monstrous amount of podcasts (first and foremost, The Tim Ferriss Show), I thought: "Why not interview these people? Let them tell their lives, their stories."

Then nothing ever came of it—life took over, and days turned into months, then years, without this idea materializing. Then I moved to NYC, working in an Italian restaurant in SoHo, and once again, the light bulb went off. An endless variety of characters passed before me every day, and for a couple of hours, I would step into their lives.

This time, I started recording these stories in a project called Night Pills Podcast, but then it stalled due to COVID.

So, to make a long story short—what is it that fascinates me so much about other people’s stories that I not only want to listen to them but also share them?

Their experiences, their beginnings, their transformations, their falls, their comebacks, their realizations, their evolutions, the blows they’ve taken, the lessons they’ve learned—their Journey in other words.

But why?

Maybe to satisfy my thirst for curiosity. Maybe to try and better understand this experience called life, to make sense of this collective human experience, to see myself through others and understand who I am.

Okay, but where does HERO come from?

Going back to my time in Australia, one of my best friends and spiritual guides, Geraldo—a Brazilian surfer and writer—one autumn day, as we walked barefoot along a cliff overlooking the ocean, told me about Joseph Campbell and his Hero’s Journey.

What do Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings), Luke Skywalker (Star Wars), Neo (The Matrix), Simba (The Lion King), Hercules, Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz), Odysseus, Santiago (The Alchemist), Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, and Theseus have in common?

They are all variations of the same hero.

Joseph Campbell studied myths from around the world and wrote a book titled The Hero with a Thousand Faces, explaining how all these stories tell of the "monomyth" or "Hero’s Journey".

What is this Hero’s Journey?

It’s a cycle. A pattern. One in which the protagonist moves from the "ordinary world" to the "unknown world," and through this journey, encounters key milestones—steps in their evolution."

In the next articles, I’ll explore these steps individually—stay tuned!

M