For a long while I’ve been thinking about writing a new book about the quest I have been - and am continuing to go - on. It turns out there is a journey after the Heroes Journey. A post-Heroes Journey if you will. One that leads you off in search of meaning rather than success. A process to earn your name and take your rightful place in the world. For me it has also been a journey away from a rationalist materialist perspective into one that values individual experience over measurement - whatever that might be and wherever that might lead.
A few weeks ago, pondering this and other things I went to interview the cosmologist, author, anthropologist and physicist Dr Jude Currivan. It’s a wonderful conversation I will be sharing later in the Summer but, in the process of our chat, she said to me ‘the thing is Dan, it’s not about the Heroes Journey any more. It’s the Weirdo’s Journey because it’s about ‘we’ rather than ‘I’.’
She then went on to explain the etymology of the word ‘weird’ comes from the Old English word for wisdom, fate and the power to control ones own destiny.
Shakespeare seems to be responsible for changing the definition we have for the word ‘weird’ in our heads into something odd, supernatural or disturbing.
Now I’ve been in the book game for long enough to know a good book title when I hear one. I immediately said to Jude ‘If you don’t write a book with that title I will!’ and, laughing, she told me to go for it.
It will be a narrative non-fiction book about my travels up and down the country speaking to my wonderful guests about the meaning of life and how to make sense of what it means to live before we die.
The Weirdo’s Journey.
Watch this space.
Much love,
Dan