Stage 2
The call to adventure: when life asks for more
Stage 2 of the Hero's Journey: capoeira as a bridge and Bairo's arrival in Brazil in 2002. How to recognize the call in your life and take the first step.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
A circle. People around it, clapping. The berimbau keeps time, the pandeiro answers, someone leads a song in Portuguese. In the middle, two bodies move without stopping, one asking, the other answering.
For most of the people there, it is practice. For a young Colombian, it is something else. It is proof that the country he has been announcing since boyhood already exists inside him, before he ever sets foot there.
Capoeira was the bridge. And every bridge, sooner or later, asks to be crossed.
What this stage is
In the Hero's Journey, described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and organized into twelve stages by Christopher Vogler, the second stage is the call to adventure.
It is the moment when something interrupts the ordinary world. It can be news, an invitation, a loss, a meeting, an opportunity that appears without warning. Sometimes the call is loud, like being laid off. Sometimes it is quiet, like a wish that won't go away.
The call brings no guarantees. It doesn't say how it will end. It says only that life as it is is not the whole of life, and that there is somewhere to go. Vogler notes that the call usually arrives before the hero feels ready. That is precisely what makes it a call, and not a plan.
In Bairo's life
Bairo's call came in two beats.
The first was internal: the dream of living in Brazil, which he had carried since boyhood. Capoeira gave that dream a body. The ginga, the movement that never stops, taught him something that would come back many times in his life: in the circle, whoever stops, falls.
The second was concrete. In 2002, the road appeared. Bairo came to Brazil brought by an education company, and he did not come to fill just any post: he took on a management position.
The boy's dream had come true. Brazil was real, and he was in it.
Notice how the call presented itself. It was not a gift dropped from the sky, nor an isolated stroke of luck. It was a meeting between an old certainty and a concrete door. The certainty had trained the eye. The door only had to appear.
That is what Bairo describes when he says he does not believe in coincidences, only in purpose, dreams and execution. The purpose had been there since childhood. The dream had the name of a country. What was missing was execution, and it began with a suitcase and a job.
It would be nice to say that, from then on, everything went well. It didn't. The next stage of this journey tells of the fear that came right after. But the call had been answered, and no later fall would undo that fact: he went.
In your life
The call rarely arrives with fanfare. It often looks like an annoyance.
If you are an entrepreneur who went broke, the call may be in the question you avoid: what if the next business is different from everything I've done before? If you are an immigrant, it may be the original reason you left, which routine has been erasing. If you are starting over, it may be the idea that came back right now, just when it seemed there was no more room for ideas.
Questions to identify your call:
- What has been showing up in your life again and again, in conversations, invitations, signs, without you paying attention?
- Which door opened recently that you pretended not to see?
- If you knew it couldn't go wrong, what would you do in the next twelve months?
- What part of you does your daily life today not use?
Three steps for this week
- Name the call. Write it in a single sentence: "Life is calling me to…". If three sentences come out, choose the one that brings the most fear and the most desire at the same time.
- Find your bridge. Bairo had capoeira. What activity, community, course or person already connects you to where you want to go? Give it one hour this week.
- Look for a concrete door. A dream without a door becomes a sigh. List three real paths (a job opening, a contact, a public call for proposals, a client) and take a small step on one of them.
Answering the call doesn't require dropping everything tomorrow. It requires no longer pretending it didn't call.
The line for this stage
"The call doesn't ask whether you're ready. It asks whether you'll go."
A line written for this series, drawn from Bairo's story.
Next stage
Stage 3: Refusal of the call, when fear paralyzes