The Art of the mundane journey

Sometimes to make a journey worth it is to think you might not make it. The Odyssey isn’t really an odyssey without the cyclops, the lotus-eaters, or the sirens. The hero doesn’t become a hero without obstacles and evil thwarting his way. 

It doesn’t really have to be an epic adventure to be a journey. A journey is any quest. A trip to the grocery store is a journey. Getting the mail is a journey. Getting a cold one from the fridge is a journey. These are journeys of the mundane.

Maybe you get the mail every day and nothing ever happens. You know where the mailbox is. You know the best route to get there and back. You walk up the drive while you sort the mail in your hands without ever looking up to see what is in your way. Still eyeing the names on the envelopes, you kick the door out of your way and enter your house unscathed. The journey is forgotten. You have learned nothing. You have wasted your time getting mail.

Then one day you go out and travel to the mailbox, using your trusty path from the front door down the driveway to the mailbox that sits at the corner of your driveway and the sidewalk. You are thinking about your day at work and all the things you need to do, and you think of that stupid coworker, and you think about dinner, and you walk absentmindedly towards the black metal container that holds your posts. Your foot finds something on the ground that isn’t ever there and you fall. Your hands can barely get out from your sides to stop your face from meeting the driveway asphalt. You have tripped and now you are lying on your stomach wondering if all your extremes are fully operational. The journey has gone from a monotonous task that you spent no mental effort into a dangerous treacherous quest. 

Now every time you walk that driveway you keep a wary eye on the ground to make sure you don’t trip again. The mailbox taunts you. It is no longer a part of your home, but a far off island that is protected by monsters.

Nothing strengthens a person than a journey, especially if it is dangerous or the object might not be obtainable. 

Technology has killed the journey.

There are objects at a store that has hours. Part of that journey is whether that store will be open or not when you get there or if they will have that object. Maybe they usually have it but are out or you are taking a chance because you don’t know if that store stocks that kind of thing. Some people who do not want any growth in their life will call the store, Google the store, or ask on Facebook at the popular hometown page. They don’t want to leave their domain without all the facts. They want to be in complete control from point A to point B. The free spirit who seeks wisdom and knowledge in all things will leave and go to the store with no ideas if it will work out. They might find the store closed or the store out of the thing they went to get, but then the object they went to get becomes even greater. They will have to continue the journey.

The journey is part of life that means the most. One can not ever finally get anywhere because they will have to go somewhere else. Some say we have journeyed before we were born and will journey long after we die, but even if we only live the one life, it is a long continuous journey. 

To be good at journeys, one has to master a few skills. Patience, for you will find you don’t get much right when you want it. Some people get whatever they want whenever they want and they are a very single-layered person. One who doesn’t get what they want but wait for a better time or a different thing will be rewarded with many layers and become a complex human being. 

A lot of people expect the people around them to cater to their needs and desires so that they don’t have to journey. They expect people to change their behaviors and lives to fit the strict controlling expectations they have on life, but they find themselves disappointed over and over again. Some will spend their lives trying hard to never hear anything hard like truth, criticism, or rejection. They become soft and easily damaged by a much lessen blow than those that will hear the uncomfortable truth. 

Those who hide from the harsh truth will bury themselves in the sand so that they don’t have to do anything that will cause discomfort. They point at the thing that scares them for the reason they are covered in sand, but will never be farther away from that fear since they are comfortable in their hole.

Part of journeys is the refusal. None of us want to leave our comfortable homes and walk into the wilderness. Fear can hold on to us so hard and it will feel like it will never let go, but to become a hero, we must. Sometimes that is going to work when we don’t feel like it. Sometimes that is cleaning up right away instead of maybe tomorrow. We take baths, we watch an insane amount of TV, or we just sit around bemoaning everybody and everything else as stupid, but we refuse to walk through it. 

There are a lot of things we fear on our journey that cannot kill us, but yet we give up when we face them. Looking vulnerable, stupid, or ugly can cause a person to give up going to the grocery store, to a party, or to sing at karaoke. We regret not doing those things because we know that it wasn’t a real monster that stopped us. We could have grown.

Some things will kill us. That is true. The very end of this journey ends in death. I think death gets a bum rap. It is much less dramatizing than birth. Birth wasn’t a choice. You are just pulled out of the fluids and into a world that has set itself up the way it is and you have to just enter it, learn it, and figure out how to navigate it until you finally die. Death can be the sweet release into the nothingness, or it can be a gateway into some kind of afterlife, and in some religions it will be nice – most religions have very ugly afterlives, but what are you gonna do?

It is worth noting that death should be reserved for the universal decision and not the decision of one self-based on a fleeting feeling no matter how real or how heavy that is. Death isn’t always just the end of one person’s journey but the obstacle and crushing evil of other people’s journeys. Let the universe decide when other people should grieve your departure, not you.

I think a lot about how my wife and I handle going somewhere exotic. She has to look at all the pictures and read all the travel blogs about a place. I want to come to the place with as little information as possible. We went to Procida, Italy. It is this small island off the coast of Naples, Italy. We have to take a ferry to get there. We were approaching the island and I started noticing the buildings in pastel colors slope up the hill of the island like nothing I had ever seen. I exclaimed. I was stunned by its beauty and possible mysteries. My wife was surprised that I didn’t look before. She already knew what the island would look like. She was still amazed to be there in person, but I had the full surprise. The journey remained a mystery until we were pulling into the marina.

I’m not saying you should be a Fool and travel with no plans or information. I do believe that you should have the right tools for the job. I believe that knowing about some of the obstacles is helpful. You should go to a store in the middle of the day. They will probably be open. If you go late at night they might be closed. Go to a grocery store for food, not a hardware store.

On the day before Nicole and I were going to get engaged, She and I got into a huge fight and then my bike broke in the middle of nowhere Holland. She had to rush back to the bike shop to let them know what was going on since our phones weren’t working out there. I had to walk this broken bike miles and miles. I didn’t know where I was or if I was safe. I didn’t know what kind of monsters I would meet on the path, but what I did was kept going. I walked across some of the most beautiful and peaceful pastoral lands I had ever been in. It cleared my head. I had some fear of marrying Nicole. Instead of understanding her I decided to get mad and clam up. This journey across the canals and fields full of birds and waterfowl was bringing me clarity.

I believe in the journey. It is why I love walks with Rufus. He is so good at only enjoying the journey. He loves to sniff things and see what animals are doing and roll in feces. I try to make sure that I understand that I must be in the moment and place instead of being back at the car already. Look at the flowers. Look at the clouds move across the sky. Watch the wind make the grass across the way look like rivers.

When I’m at lunch and I look at my phone and scroll through the news or Facebook, I am lost in a delusion. I am looking for things to feed me. I must consume content. I look up and time has gone by fast. I have not journeyed. I have escaped. I have buried myself in the sand. Some lunches I don’t look at my phone. I just sit there and try to be present. I listen to my breathing. I breathe my way past the resentments and fear that plague me at work. Time sits still for me. My lunch break stretches longer. The more present I remain, the longer my lunch break is. It still ends at some point, but I feel refreshed and renewed with a present lunch rather than a scrolling escape lunch.

Take a journey. Forget the end. Forget the goal. Forget the point. Be on the journey. I find that I like to adapt to my environment rather than try to force the environment to mold to me. I can’t change other people. They sure won’t when I tell them. I can only change me and where I am. No one owes me anything – even if they do.

You can read and research all you want, but nothing teaches better than a journey.