The Call

There comes a moment in most people’s lives—often when we’re still young—when we look around at the world and think: There has to be more than this.

More than going to a job you hate just to scrape by.

More than living inside a body that’s breaking down under the weight of bad food, bad habits, and no light.

More than numbing yourself with alcohol, fast food, or whatever distraction is trending that decade.

More than just limping through life, one step at a time, toward a future that feels just as dead as the present.

I remember when that moment hit me. I was probably thirteen or fourteen. I looked at the adults in my life—family members, neighbors, friends of the family—and what I saw terrified me.

They weren’t living. They were surviving.

Their lives weren’t built—they just happened.

They didn’t pursue anything. They didn’t create anything. They didn’t even believe there could be more. They were just drifting forward on autopilot, waiting for the weekend, waiting for retirement, waiting to die.

And the worst part?

They weren’t even questioning it.

They thought this was normal.

But I couldn’t accept that.

Even as a teenager, something inside me screamed No.

This can’t be all there is.

The Hero’s Journey Isn’t Just Myth

Joseph Campbell called it the Hero’s Journey.

He said all great myths follow the same basic shape: A person is living in an ordinary, broken world… when they receive the “Call to Adventure.” It’s the call that says: Wake up. There’s more. You were meant for something else. Something higher.

But here’s the part that gets left out of the fairytales:

Most people ignore the call.

They feel it—but they suppress it.

They hear it—but they drown it out.

Because answering that call requires you to leave the familiar.

It means walking away from the routines, the substances, the comforts, the false identities you’ve clung to your whole life.

And that’s terrifying.

So instead, most people numb it.

With fried food.

With reality TV.

With scrolling and swiping and buying things they don’t need.

With alcohol, gossip, sugar, or endless distraction.

They silence the call.

But it never goes away.

It just echoes beneath everything, whispering in moments of quiet:

There has to be more than this.

The Rut Is Comfortable—And Deadly

Life has a gravity to it. Once you fall into a pattern—especially a self-destructive one—it’s incredibly hard to climb out. You don’t even realize it’s a rut until years have gone by and everything starts to look the same. Same job. Same mood. Same numbness. Same regrets.

And the longer you stay in that loop, the harder it is to imagine anything else.

The world around you might be dead, but at least it’s familiar.

At least it doesn’t ask anything of you.

Answering the call means stepping into the unknown.

And that’s the one thing the modern world has trained us to fear more than anything.

But the Unknown Is Where the Light Lives

Here’s the paradox:

The thing we fear the most—stepping into the unknown—is also the only thing that can save us.

Because what we’re really afraid of isn’t risk.

It’s becoming someone new.

It’s letting go of the identity we’ve built out of pain, failure, fear, and survival.

It’s giving up the false comforts of the familiar in exchange for the sharp clarity of growth.

And that takes courage.

It takes faith in something we can’t always name.

We don’t even know what we’re looking for when we begin. We just know we have to start.

To seek.

To try.

For Me, the Path Was Inward

I didn’t find meaning in the outer world.

The world made a lot of promises, but never delivered.

What it offered were temporary highs. Fleeting pleasures. Shiny distractions that dulled quickly and left me emptier than before.

So I turned inward.

Not out of virtue, but because I had no other option.

When you’re locked in a prison cell on death row, the external world is stripped away. All you’re left with is your own breath. Your own mind. Your own spirit.

That’s where I found the beginning of the real path.

I turned to internal alchemy, not because it sounded poetic, but because I needed something that worked. I needed to take the lead I was drowning in—rage, despair, trauma, grief—and transmute it into something that wouldn’t kill me. Something that might even heal me.

Later, I found martial arts. Tang Soo Do. The way of the empty hand.

And that too became part of the inner path.

Every form was a ritual. Every stance a prayer. Every breath a way to bring myself back into my body, back into presence, back into power.

The Richest Path Is the One Within

The world tells us to search outside ourselves.

Find the right job. The right partner. The right car.

Consume the right content. Project the right image.

Buy the right supplements, say the right affirmations, wear the right crystals.

But the real work doesn’t happen out there.

It happens the moment you stop running.

The moment you stop numbing yourself.

The moment you decide that staying asleep costs more than waking up.

You don’t need a map.

You don’t need a perfect plan.

You just need to listen to that voice inside—the one that whispers there has to be more—and believe it.

That whisper is the Call.

And the first step you take in response?

That’s the beginning of the Way.

The Call Is a Gift

If you’ve felt it—that sense that something is missing, that ache for meaning—it means you’re not dead inside. Not yet.

It means your soul is still alive and kicking.

It means the fire hasn’t gone out.

That feeling is the invitation.

It’s the first rung on the ladder that leads upward—toward your full potential, your deeper self, your sacred work.

Ignore it, and the world will try to grind you down until you forget it was ever there.

Answer it, and your entire life begins to shift.

Not all at once. Not easily. But truthfully.

It will hurt.

You’ll stumble.

You’ll lose things—maybe people, maybe comforts, maybe versions of yourself.

But you’ll gain you.

And that’s the trade the Hero always has to make.

So Here’s What I Know

There is more.

There’s meaning. There’s purpose. There’s beauty. There’s power.

But none of it comes automatically.

You have to go to it.

You have to say yes to the call when it comes, even if your voice shakes.

You have to be willing to break the cycle—to choose the unknown over the familiar, the sacred over the safe.

The door won’t open for you.

But it will open to you—if you knock.

And on the other side is the version of you that remembers why you’re here.

Who you really are.

And what you were born to do.