Crossing The Threshold.

  Henceforth I ask not good fortune—I myself am good fortune;                                            Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing.                                                                Strong and content, I travel the open road.                                                                                                                                    —Walt Whitman

  In my 20 years of life experience, I cannot count how many times I have heard the statement "Life is an adventure waiting for you to answer the call". While I have always understood the purpose behind adults telling me this I always found it to be cliche' and overused. How could life truly be an adventure? All the adventures I had come across through reading and media (Lord of the Rings, Eragon, Harry Potter, etc.) were so grand and involved great peril followed by great reward for those brave enough to embark on the journey. Each of these heroic tales started with grandiose calls to action followed by engrossing tales about the adventure ahead, while the closest I had ever come to a "call to action" was my high school art teacher telling me to run to the office and make a copy for her. So day by day I went through my life waiting for my "calling" to appear and whisk me away to my destiny... but it never came. 

  After arriving at Montana Sate University, I started to gain exposure to other great works of literature containing even more tales of enterprise. It probably comes as no surprise that one of these books is Ovid's Metamorphoses. Happily I read along through the different tales until I came to the parable of Theseus and the Minotaur. After I finished reading something struck me like a lightning bolt. Theseus did not wait for a sign before he took action, he willingly sought it out when he saw that it was necessary. 

  I was quite taken aback by this seemingly obvious solution to the problem I had been living through for years. While life might be an adventure waiting in the wings, it is not going to click on a neon sign signaling you to take action, sometimes you have to grab a flashlight and search for it. It was at that moment that I walked into the study abroad offices at MSU and applied to the Lorenzo di' Medici University in Florence Italy. After a few weeks of fretting, I received my acceptance letter. So that is that, soon I start my own monomyth with me as my own hero. I cannot wait to go through every bit of my separation, initiation, and eventually, my return. Sometimes all it takes to wake you up to reality, is a long forgotten myth. 

The Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog, 1818, Oil on Canvas, Caspar David Friedrich