Stories like these are core to what mythologist Joseph Campbell began to identify in the 1940s as the Hero’s Journey theme in global storytelling, a theme that I was grateful to start understanding in my midtwenties. Hero’s Journey stories convey the transformation of a person—almost always a Quarterlifer—from one level of consciousness to another.

turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols.

to hear internal guidance even when it moves against the status quo.

Joseph Campbell, who through his study of the human experience through our ancestors’ stories, concluded that “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”80

(See “Deep Dive: Remembering Who You Are.”)