Journey

Today I will post what I believe to be the closest thing to an original idea I've ever had. It's possible that you've heard this or variations of it before, but I came up with it independently. All similarities are coincidences. I'm fond of telling people this personal philosophy when we walk somewhere together, and they find themselves stopping and waiting for me because I walk so slow. I don't remember where or why I first came up with it, but it was greatly refined during my Literature class this semester. While reading The Odyssey, the professor introduced two terms, dilatory and teleological. Both relate to journies, dilatory being the tendency to enjoy the journey and avoid the end, and teleological is the desire to reach the end, complete the journey.

Anyway, here it goes. What is our destination? It's not some store or friend's house. For all of us, it's death. Our lives are nothing more than a journey towards our eventual deaths.

Whoo, great idea Chris. Going good so far with all your originality. Hold on though. It gets better.

A have a number of problems with modern American society, but one that bugs me is our tendency to rush, driving headlong into whatever destination takes our fancy. For all our lives, we're told to look towards the future and keep our eye on the goal. When we're young, we focus on the time when we get our driver's license or turn twenty-one and can start drinking legally. One of the most cliche lines in the world is "Are we there yet?" As a society, we don't care about the journey. Only the destination. I think we really need to readjust our priorities because this is screwed up. Though death is not something we should fear, it certainly isn't something we should be rushing headlong towards. Life is a journey and is all about that journey. The destination is really a secondary concern. If we keep caring only about the destination, we are missing so much. I say we need to slow down. Bike instead of drive, walk instead of bike, and admire our surroundings. Enjoy or, at least, pay attention to every moment of our lives a little more.

You know, if anything affected this idea it's the town where I grew up. Baudette, Minnesota. Population 1,400. About two hours away from any city worth going to. In school, I was happy if my team only had to drive an hour to get to our meet or whatever. There have been more than a few times that I've spent more time driving to than spending time at the place I ended up at. If I only cared about the destination, I would have wasted a lot of my life on the road.

Looking back on this post, I see that it really resembles the aphorism "Stop and smell the roses," but I'm still proud of my idea.