Have you thought about why it is that so many of the best adventure stories or epic quests end where they begin: at Home? Homer’s Odysseus takes ten years to get home to his wife and son in Ithaca following his participation in the Peloponnesian wars. Dorothy’s whole purpose once in Oz is to return to her family farm in Kansas where Auntie Em will be anxiously awaiting her return.
Home is where the heart is, we say, so that even our everyday adventures at the workplace or venturing forth for groceries can become itself a mini Hero Cycle that is ultimately Homeward Bound. And every time a baseball player steps up to the plate for his or her turn at bat? You’ve got it: the Goal is to make it back around to Home Base via the arduous adventure through three challenging turning points guarded by the Basemen who stand ready to waylay the hapless voyager.
So, why Home? Wouldn’t it make more sense for an adventure tale to be about going somewhere other than back to where the story began? Do Frodo or Bilbo Baggins really need to get back to the Shire in order for their epic saga to feel complete, their quests fulfilled? For that matter, what then does the final scene in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings add to this epic cycle when Bilbo and Frodo actually leave with Gandalf on the elvish vessel to cross the great waters, never again to return to the Shire? What’s that about? Yes, even on a grander scale: Going HOME!
So, where is this mythical, mystical spiritual Home to which all good heroes—like you and me—ultimately are destined to Return? Call it what you like: your Shangri-La, Ithaca, or Xanadu; all are metaphors for where we are all really headed with our journeys from the cradle to the grave, and Beyond. Life is ultimately uncontainable; our conscious Spirit moves us inevitably onward to transcendent Reality beyond this pale plane of material illusions and temporal diversions. Home is a realm beyond places in spacetime where we have never really left; we are always Here-Now! Our projected journey ends where it begins because it is not really about going anywhere at all but rather, it is about remembering who we ARE and what our Source, IS.
Better Endings 