All kinds of readers are welcome here at Rogue Priest. I know not everyone is interested in adventuring. Not everyone agrees that travel is the best training to learn how to act heroically. That’s okay.
If you just enjoy reading about the stuff I run into on my quest, pull up a chair. I won’t run out of stories soon.
But I want to be really clear about why this blog exists, and what it is I call the Heroic Life.
More Than Your Everyday Life
The Heroic Life is a life of constantly challenging yourself to do more to change the world. This blog chronicles an attempt to live that way.
Doing more means not what you’re already doing. If you just got back from disarming a bomb on a speeding train while you were in labor with triplets, awesome! Take a day off to rest, then tell me your plan to challenge yourself more next week.
Changing the world means something, too. Change can be small. It can start at home, in your community—it often does. But it absolutely must mean something beyond the scope of just you. The wonderful stuff you do for yourself, your mate, your children, your grandmother—that is all stuff that makes you a good human being. But to be heroic means to give of yourself even for people you don’t know. What are you doing that changes the broader world?
I believe that people in many different roles, on all different walks of life, can live this way. Some of the ways I challenge myself are athletic, and you may have no interest in that. But if you’re reading this, no matter who you are, you can think of a way to challenge yourself to become a little bit stronger, or wiser, or to pick up a new skill.
And the more you develop yourself personally, the more tools you have to make a difference for those around you.
You might not be interested in climbing a mountain. Neither is Laura LaVoie, as far as I know. Her challenge was to build her own tiny house and downsize her life to fit into it. Then she went to Africa to use her house-building skills to help orphaned children.
Teresa Carey gave up everything to buy a boat and sail the world. Now she teaches others how to live simply in order to reach their dreams.
A common theme in both of these brave lives, and one you will see often here on Rogue Priest, is the idea of willfully changing your lifestyle. I don’t believe my normal, everyday life is heroic and I don’t believe yours is either. If you’re looking for that, this might not be the blog for you. But I do believe we can all move continuously toward that heroic ideal. It’s something you can do, and it takes sacrifice.
Teresa worked thankless jobs at every port and carefully rationed her food. Laura and her husband have been working on their tiny house with their own four hands since 2009. If you don’t have the money, the time, or the freedom to change the world, the question I have for you is: how can you change your situation?
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Drew Jacob, Rogue Priest
January 4th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Amazing post! Keep sharing your words!
January 4th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Wow. Thanks, Drew. I am so humbled that you would mention me again in your blog. I don’t really know what else to say except thank you. I don’t really see the stuff I’m doing as specifically heroic and I do nothing compared to some of the people we’re working with in Africa. But thanks for pointing people to the work we’re doing.
January 4th, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Definitely Laura. I know you don’t feel heroic doing what you do… I don’t know that anyone ever does. But I’m glad you’re doing it.
January 5th, 2012 at 10:12 am
I’m working on it! Starting at the bottom with virtual employment, hoping to get somewhere with that eventually so I can go to France:) Although life has yet again thrown a few totally unexpected hiccups at me, the bastard.
Look forward to reading about your adventures in Mexico.
January 5th, 2012 at 11:07 am
That is a beautiful dream Grace! I’m so happy you’re taking active steps toward it. Please let me know if there is any way I can help.
January 5th, 2012 at 10:39 am
LIKE!
January 5th, 2012 at 11:06 am
Yay! Glad to know you’re still reading, Nicki :)
January 9th, 2012 at 9:29 pm
Great post as usual :)
Have a number of things on the go that pushes me a little bit farther over time to something new and different, but always better. Most often involving expanding my skills. Even as I’ve much to do, as I push myself forward, it gets easier to do them. Next up, fusing rock bowls and paper making. *rubs palms* Bring it.
January 10th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
Ooh paper making! I am a firm believer that learning new skills is key to the heroic life. What is fusing rock bowls?
January 10th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
An invention of mine *Muahahaha*. It is using the technique of glassworking (which is another thing I learned, and was great fun) but instead of using glass, you are using stones! I’ll be putting them into the shape of bowls to make them useful instead of just ornamental. But you can’t eat out of them because of the 10% lead in the solder. Neat eh?
January 10th, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Oh, and the paper making is going to be at Ehoah standard – no harmful connections in the entire process of making it (it is not an easy feat) So I’m going to be using wild dry grass I harvested with my sickle and mulching it up by hand and so on and so forth. Been meaning to do it for some time to make my Ehoah Calendars. Which makes harvesting and making my own ink the next step.
January 25th, 2012 at 12:33 am
Those both sound incredibly cool. If I’m ever your way I would love to learn a little.
January 25th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Ha, that’s kind of funny because this is pretty out of the way as it is. Being an Island and all (worlds largest fresh water island to be exact). If you do come this way I suggest making it a two week thing where one week I teach what little I know (while I leech a bit of knowledge off you) and the other week falls onto one of the Thunder Mountain retreats (one of the most sacred places to the Anishinabek, aka Ojibwe) perhaps even do the fast yourself while I can be your helper.
January 16th, 2012 at 1:48 am
Personally, Drew, I think you’ve always been the kind of friend who has always nudged me towards challenging myself. Sometimes not always a comfortable thing, but also equally encouraging at the same time. I know you’ll cheer me on, yet I know you will push me, too.
I also think of my nephews. They’re teens now, but they are the best at encouraging me to do awesome things because they always believe in me, and that is some mighty pressure. I don’t want to let them down. Those boys look up to me. They have a way of making you want to set an awesome example for them.
Equal amounts of pressure, motivation, love, and a yearning to create and share it with others I believe leads to making movements — actions — in the bigger, outside world — not to be a hero, but to be the best human being one can be.
So. What challenges have I been overcoming? Many, too many to list here, could fill a book with ‘em, point I’m trying to make is, I’m with you on this journey. I may not be taking the same train ride and sitting next to you, but I’m there in spirit, finding my purpose and supporting yours, too.
That’s why I am here, replying, even when you are too busy adventuring to reply back!
January 19th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Thank you Val. I’m so glad to have you with me in spirit and be able to talk regularly here. It means the world to me that you still have some faith in me after all these years.
January 21st, 2012 at 1:22 pm
That’s because you mean the world to me! :-)
I have always believed in you, even more when you did not believe in yourself, and when other people put you down. I am very pleased that you are working on making your dreams come true because that makes my dreams for you come true.
Yay!
January 21st, 2012 at 1:28 pm
One thing I have to mention: I put a lot of pressure on myself this week to challenge myself to do something awesome, yet I did not work out a plan, just on the idea of awesome. I did at least one little thing each day, however I was hard on myself for not doing enough. I worked myself into a ball of frustration. Ughhhh! Then I talked to my counselor last night to straighten my thinking out. I had forgotten to give myself a break. I had forgotten to remind myself that it is very important to take stock of the excellent things I have done to date.
I realized that there is a time to challenge yourself and there is a time when you have to take care of yourself first and a time for time off. Sometimes the most awesome thing to do is to just keep doing what you are doing, right? Something to keep in mind while challenging yourself to be the best.
February 25th, 2012 at 10:30 am
[...] travel. Presently, I’m in Mexico City, Mexico. Mexico has plenty of magicians but lots of imitators. [...]
May 23rd, 2012 at 2:06 pm
[...] Instead, challenge those assumptions. [...]