Sometimes the journey is as much about leaving where you are as it is about where you are going. For we have to leave one place, whether a physical place or place in our lives, to travel or transition to another. We have to develop a very particular skill to be successful in our endeavors. The ability to let go. Of people, of things, of places.
We have to let go, first and foremost, of the things we were taught that don't serve us in a world that is not the one we grew up in. Our parents and families teach us survival as they know it in their time and place. They teach us the world they know, or at least their outlook on it from their place in it. The economics, the politics, the dynamics in which they are trying to survive. But the one that we are born into and the one we ultimately strike a path of our own in are often vastly different places. Change is a part of life that we are rarely taught to embrace.
People are so busy surviving in the moment that change usually takes them by surprise. They will often rage against it, creating a hostile takeover; for change is as inevitable as the tides. But change is not the enemy, all too often it’s the gentle push towards important and necessary growth. The journey that defines our lives is not the seeking of a safe harbor in which we anchor and hope to avoid the storms. It’s a highway we navigate, taking exits for unestablished lengths of time where we may find temporary refuge. Inevitably, however, we will have to leave the safe havens and continue on. Whether voluntarily or involuntarily change will come. The more it’s fought the more damage it does. Learn to let go and move on. While you’re fighting, you’re wasting movement and growth and delaying or even completely missing the exits you’re meant to reach.
Not all opportunities are timeless. Most, in fact, have fragile expiration dates.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t value relationships along the way. Quite the contrary. Embrace them, indulge in them, cherish them, because they too are fleeting. You may be lucky enough to have a bare few that last most of your life. A sibling who has been there from the beginning, who is there to the end or you for their end. But most relationships are not beginning to end. Most families are not cohesive enough to last your entire existence. Even strong parental bonds will be severed by death, usually around your middle years or even earlier. If you got more time than that; count yourself lucky.
Don’t delay the journey to hold on to the past. In holding too stringently to that anchor you’ll bog yourself down to the point of immobility. You become the one broken down on the side of that highway, or in the woods and swamps beyond if you’re really stubborn.
We all know someone like that, someone who wouldn’t move on after their lives fell apart. With that kind of obstinate insistence, you have no chance of finding others with which to journey. You’re just digging a hole in the swamp in which you have moored yourself. No one is going to come sit with you broken down on the side of the road for long, much less help you dig that grave.
We’re like sharks in the grand scheme of things, we must move to breathe and live. Some of us are the little sand sharks, going about our journey. Some are great whites that consume everything and everyone in their path. Keep a sharp eye on the latter. Either way movement is necessary.
Those who don’t move at all become barnacles on the piers of life. Never moving, never experiencing, just existing. We all know a barnacle or two. The vast majority of them are miserable individuals. Ask yourself is it enough to just exist? I have known people who sink into deep depressions moored in their swamps and they all use the same phrase. “I’m just taking up space in a world that needs the room.” The interesting thing about people, they don’t see themselves the way the world around them does. A barnacle doesn’t see itself as a stationary creature clinging to a pier. Occasionally a boat. And the boat makes it feel as if it’s moving. Technically I suppose it is, but through the momentum of others journeys and hard work. Its only interaction is observance. That’s just another form of existing.
That said, another aspect of your own journey is being sure to keep the barnacles to a minimum. The journey is much harder if you’re bearing extra weight that isn’t your own. You cannot walk for another, it’s extremely hard to carry another person for any amount of time. Even a fast-moving ship with a strong motor is slowed by the barnacles. And if there are enough of them, they can bring you to a crawl. You burn more fuel, move more slowly, use your resources for everything you are carrying, which slows your own journey.
We all, to some degree, voluntarily carry extra from time to time or in some cases an entire lifetime. Children, for instance, are probably the most common passengers in our journey, followed by mates who will often be fellow journeymen and occasionally carry us when we need it. If you have a good pairing anyway. It’s when only one is doing the carrying that you’re presented with a problem.
For a long time, our society told us that this was the way of the world. That one should find and be carrying the soul mate and with them add children to the journey. It was the expectation in many cultures for a long time. That didn’t make it right. In fact, imposing this belief slowed the progress of civilization and continues to this day to slow it as attempts are made to suppress more than half a population with this belief system. Whether it’s culture or religion or both. Imagine the progress we might have made in a millennia had we not instituted this?
The key to a good journey is progress. Are you growing? Change is good, it’s natural and necessary. When we find ourselves in a stagnant place, we need to recognize that and reach into ourselves for answers. What do we want? What change do we need or desire? By all means consider your partner or your family in that consideration, but don’t abandon your journey.
Not all journeys require long jaunts or distance. Your journey may be more internal. Others may be more external. All are necessary. By digging in and refusing change we will lose those people and things most important to us. More importantly we’ll lose ourselves. We’re just digging a shallow grave in which we sit, waiting for an end. For some even praying for an end a long time before it comes. Don’t get bogged down in the swamp waiting for it to close in around you. Embrace change, embrace the journey.
