Journey

Isn't it always exciting to anticipate a journey? Make your lists, buy new clothes, pack your bags, check off all the travel necessities - exciting, yes. And everyone has heard the analogy of life being one big journey. Well, I'm not sure about life being a journey in the sense of having a destination. I think of it more like a long narrative of smaller, overlapping journeys.

“To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping”
~Chinese Proverb

Some journeys take the forefront in your mind and will not let you alone, requiring a walk of faith not knowing where the path will lead. Entrusted with information such that there is no choice but to act. To give, to listen, to reach out to someone hardly known, and to bring others along on the journey to help. It's a journey of giving.

Other journeys beckon you to come, begin, stretch, risk, learn. Step on the path, just one step at a time, and share your talent, your soul, in order to gain a dream. Is it possible? The personal journey of discovery and growth, this is.

Not all journeys are joyful, satisfying journeys. Sometimes a journey comes to a sad and rather painful end, but learning happens just the same. Dreams die, people disappoint; but if we walk uprightly and avoid bitterness, we gain deeper strength of character. If handled correctly, this can be a journey of gratitude.

Some choose a longer journey; a path of sequential tasks, week in - week out, a goal you might say. Satisfying it is to continue to mark things off the do-list and inch ever closer to the end of the journey of perseverance. This for me is the hardest journey of all.

I'm an impatient soul and sometimes journeys are not so appreciated when I'm on them. And I'm always on some sort of journey...we all are. Some are good, some are stressful and draining. And sometimes the journey makes you just plain tired. Could this be what makes us old? Yet, on some level, I take pride in the journeys I have completed. I've learned what was required and was able to move on. If I've learned it well enough, perhaps I can use those new skills with the next challenge, the next journey.

“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”
~Don Williams, Jr.

And how strange it would be not to be on a journey - is that even possible? It makes me think that perhaps purpose and direction are bound up in our life's journeys.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to pack my bags.