Leap of Faith: Average Joes and Volcanoes

Leap of Faith — Leaping into the unknown is the only way to find yourself, and to find your path of purpose.

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We haven’t been over­ly impressed with 2025 movies. There were a cou­ple of good­ies, but most­ly, meh.

We trav­el with a cou­ple hun­dred movies on a hard dri­ve, and late­ly we’ve been into old­er clas­sics. Yes­ter­day, it was “Joe Ver­sus the Vol­cano,” a 1990 com­e­dy star­ring Tom Han­ks and Meg Ryan.

I first saw the movie back in the ear­ly 90s, but it was­n’t until I was out at The Haven for a cou­ple of cours­es that I “got” the movie. 

Bill O’Han­lon was teach­ing, and I was attend­ing. He showed excerpts of the movie, and com­ment­ed relent­less­ly. He point­ed out tons of themes run­ning through the movie. For example:

• the fac­to­ry where Joe works has a sim­i­lar look to the volcano, 
• the light­ing indi­cates the per­son­’s mood, 
• it’s a movie about “soul / sole,” and 
• there’s a real issue with “Brain Clouds.”)
• We great­ly enjoyed watch­ing it again. But the high­light was when we hit “the Quote,” and I remem­bered how great the dia­logue is:

Patri­cia: “My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Every­body you know. Every­body you see. Every­body you talk to. He says that only a few peo­ple are awake and they live in a state of con­stant total amazement.”

Or, from a Bud­dhist perspective:

One of his stu­dents asked Bud­dha,
“Are you the mes­si­ah?”
“No”, answered Bud­dha.
“Then are you a heal­er?”
“No”, Bud­dha replied.
“Then are you a teacher?” the stu­dent per­sist­ed.
“No, I am not a teacher.”
“Then what are you?” asked the stu­dent, exas­per­at­ed.
“I am awake,” Bud­dha replied.

Inter­est­ing. Of all the claims the Bud­dha could have made,
he makes only this one.
I AM AWAKE!

To be awake. But awake-ness of a pecu­liar kind. It is a state of aware­ness free from judge­ment, labelling, dis­trac­tion, or “pol­i­tics.” (Win­ning, los­ing, pow­er, force.) 

Awake, with no oth­er moti­va­tion than to expe­ri­ence life ful­ly and deeply, while nev­er, nev­er cling­ing.

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All about Leaps

Mak­ing the “leap of faith” is the key theme of the movie — it’s about how one over­comes “fear” through leaping.

Let me quick­ly state that the faith we are talk­ing about is not a reli­gious faith. It’s about tak­ing a risk — a “leap” — with­out know­ing the out­come. The faith part is that, “This is going to work out as it should.” Even if that “should” is burn­ing up in a vol­cano. Hmm!

That said, what is it about leaps that turn most folks into tubs of jello? 

Why is secu­ri­ty prized so high­ly, when most end­less­ly com­plain (qui­et­ly, usu­al­ly) about what they have to do for that security? 

I can’t tell you how many peo­ple I’ve known over the years who have set­tled for love­less rela­tion­ships, bor­ing jobs, blocked chances, all to be able to say, “Well, at least I have… something!” 

It seems to take an ill­ness or a career col­lapse — some­thing dra­mat­ic — to real­ly shift the ground. Then, it’s leap or “drown,” leap or fall.

The first stage of the movie is all about fear, “the rut,” being mun­dane, being “stuck.”

This is cap­tured in the slog­ging, slow­ly mov­ing con­ga line of fac­to­ry work­ers, trudg­ing into a com­pa­ny that makes med­ical imple­ments (“Home of the Rec­tal Probe!” — and sort of what the world under Trump feels like… but I digress…) and 40 gal­lon drums of petro­le­um jel­ly.

Nice to see they have their bases covered.

Once Joe is diag­nosed with a Brain Cloud, (described in the movie as a rare, fatal dis­ease, with no symptoms: 

“A con­di­tion when one’s mind is else­where and some­thing is for­got­ten or done incor­rect­ly because of it.”

This con­di­tion describes the way most peo­ple live life.

Joe gets (and “gets”) the diagnosis, and with 6 months to live, decides to shift things around.

First off, he quits his dead-end job, and says the fol­low­ing to his boss:

“And why, I ask myself, why have I put up with you? I can’t imag­ine, but now I know. Fear. Yel­low freakin’ fear. I’ve been too chick­en shit afraid to live my life so I sold it to you for three hun­dred freakin’ dol­lars a week!”
(1990, remem­ber 😉 )

A Brain Cloud diag­no­sis is sort of what is offered to us at each “jump­ing-off point.” 

We can do more of the same and stay where we are, or we can “leap into the vol­cano” and con­front our fear, our desire to be safe, our all-too-human ten­den­cy to hun­ker down in the famil­iar, no mat­ter how dreary.

Life, aka. a Brain Cloud, is always fatal. Life, as they say, is a fatal disease.

Meg Ryan plays 3 women in the movie, each per­fect­ly fit­ted for the “lev­el of under­stand­ing” Joe is at. 

After quit­ting his job, Joe asks the recep­tion­ist (DeDe) out on an a date — at this point, all Joe “knows” is his brain cloud diag­no­sis and that he desires to do things differently. 

He does­n’t know how, he just knows he’s “dying” for a change.

DeDe sees Joe look­ing at his shoe and asks him what’s wrong. He says “I’m los­ing my sole.” Get it?

Joe has decid­ed to shift gears, but does­n’t know how.

His date with DeDe goes nowhere — he reach­es out to hold her hand and she gives him her closed fist. She sim­ply can’t get past Joe’s “diag­no­sis.” She’s caught in the dark­ness or her own fears (as well as this part of the movie — filmed darkly.)

Joe, how­ev­er, is just begin­ning to see the light. 

He says, to DeDe:

“I mean, who am I? That’s the real ques­tion, isn’t it? Who am I? Who are you? What oth­er ques­tions are there? What oth­er ques­tions are there, real­ly? If you want to under­stand the uni­verse, embrace the uni­verse. The door to the uni­verse is you!”

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Joe’s jour­ney actu­al­ly begins when a mys­te­ri­ous man, Mr. Gray­namore (obvi­ous, eh?) offers Joe a deal he can’t refuse. In return for a stack of unlim­it­ed cred­it cards, Joe will jour­ney to a Pacif­ic Island and throw him­self into a vol­cano, there­by sav­ing both the island and a min­er­al on the island Mr. Gray­namore wants.

This trip comprises most of the movie — Joe journeys a “crooked road,” (as do we all,) to get to the “leap.”

The oth­er two roles played by Meg Ryan are the daugh­ters of Gray­namore, Angel­i­ca and Patri­cia.

Angel­i­ca is the wastrel. She has mon­ey, yet wastes her days in emp­ty pur­suit of nothing.

She says, “I am com­plete­ly untrust­wor­thy … I’m a flibbertigibbet.”

She can­not seem to set her­self in motion. She claims to be a painter and poet. Her only paint­ing hangs in a restau­rant owned by her father. As for her poetry:

Angel­i­ca: Would you like to hear one of my poems?
Joe: Sure.
Angel­i­ca: “Long ago, the del­i­cate tan­gles of his hair cov­ered the empti­ness of my hands.” Would you like to hear it again?

Joe is “all com­pas­sion”- he sees Angel­i­ca’s pain and lone­li­ness, and treats her with great dig­ni­ty. How­ev­er, he is clear about his own path, and says, [to Angelica]

“If you have a choice between killing your­self and doing some­thing you’re scared of doing, why not take the leap and do the thing you’re scared of doing?”

Angel­i­ca can­not see past her sto­ries, and her games, and has noth­ing more to offer.

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Do it alone, in groups

At every stage, there is some­one “right there” who mir­rors Joe’s state of mind. 

In each case, Joe had to learn what he could, and move on, leav­ing DeDe, leav­ing Angel­i­ca, behind.

Joe meets Patri­cia aboard the ship (she’s the cap­tain of the “Twee­dledee,” a sail­ing ves­sel owned by her father.) that is sup­posed to take him to the Pacif­ic Island. 

They get off to a rocky start, but lat­er devel­op a deep attraction. 

They are on the adven­ture togeth­er, although they also seem to “get” that they are inde­pen­dent of each other.

Tossed into the sea of change, the sea of tur­moil, each helps the oth­er to make it to shore. 

Only the shore they make it to is the one they sought, and there’s a dead­ly vol­cano ahead.

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They discover that there is more to volcano jumping than simply showing up.

The path is pret­ty much one per­son wide. This is clear in the assent up the vol­cano — but here’s the point. 

Oth­ers are walk­ing the same path. You just have to go and find them — metaphor­i­cal­ly cross an ocean to find them. 

There will be, as in the movie, ship­wrecks, and your bag­gage always come with you (It’s his lug­gage that saves Joe twice.) That being said,

Joe: “But there are cer­tain times in your life when I guess you’re not sup­posed to have any­body, you know? There are cer­tain doors you have to go through alone.”

We encourage an active hunt for people who are walking next to you on the path.

There are oppor­tu­ni­ties to stop and talk, reflect, inter­act “get mar­ried,” etc. But the walk to the lip of the vol­cano is a solo trip that most peo­ple resist.

Why? because the nor­mal, mun­dane, day-to-day slog is so much fun? Because putting work (even fun work) ahead of “leap — work” is “what’s expected?” 

I used to offer “leap­ing” to many of my clients, and con­tin­ue to do so with my close friends, and often that’s when “out come the excuses.” 

Maybe it would be best to re-eval­u­ate. To ask your­self, “What is it I am resist­ing, and why? And then… leap into the unknown of doing the uncomfortable.

Or, as Joe said to Patri­cia, his soul and sole mate, after all was said and done:

“I saw the moon when we were out there on the ocean, shin­ing down on every­thing. I’d been mis­er­able so long. Years of my life wast­ed. Been a long time com­ing here to meet you. A long time, on a crooked road. Did I ever tell you the first time I saw you, I felt like I’d seen you before?”

He had.

It’s almost a require­ment, this leap, if you don’t want to just lie there and take it. 

Drop­ping the excus­es and walk­ing to edge requires great courage, and leap­ing — well, let’s just say you can’t bet on there being a net. 

There may just be, how­ev­er, an out­come you’d nev­er have expe­ri­enced, pre-leap.

Still, the reluc­tance runs deep. Few make the leap, and some drown in the process.

At the movie’s climax, Patricia joins Joe at the edge of the precipice, and they gaze into the flames.

Joe: Don’t do it [leap] for me.“
Patri­cia: “I’m not doing it for you! Joe, nobody knows any­thing. We’ll take this leap and we’ll see, we’ll jump, and we’ll see. That’s life.”

What, oh what, is so pre­cious about putting in time until you die?

Go, watch “Joe Ver­sus the Vol­cano,”. Then find your “vol­cano,” and leap!

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