Your Heroic Journey

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

I had the privilege to attend an outdoor U2 concert in Chicago last week.

It was a pleasant, clear night where the audience was full of excitement and energy as the band played many of its musical hits from the past 25 years or so. Halfway through the concert, U2 performed one of their most popular songs, which contains the lyrics “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

When U2 began to sing this well-known chorus, the whole audience of over 80,000 people joined in unison, singing with the band over and over, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for… I still haven’t found what I am looking for…” As energetic as any other time in the concert, the stadium of loyal fans were emotionally feeling and singing the lyrics of a song Bono had written some 25 years earlier.

The journey of Belief is one of pursuing with conviction, patience and fortitude what you “still have not found.” It is one of stepping out toward what you have yet to know or experience. It’s about allowing a compelling belief, yearning or conviction to lure you on toward a destination that is still unclear, or foggy in many ways.

I personally believe one of the core and central journeys of every person’s life is of this nature – of believing in, and stepping out in faith toward what has yet to be realized or attained. Of embracing a belief that there is something better, and allowing it to lure you on toward becoming a better person, parent, friend, spouse, leader – of reaching a meaningful vision or dream.

This is what marks each person’s “Heroic Journey.”