At its core it is a fine word, describing “travel or passage from one place to another,” the key word being place. While it can be suggestive of other things, place generally indicates a physical location. That notion is forgotten more often than not nowadays when it comes to journeys.
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu voiced what must be the most famous saying about “journey” when he said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” The implication of moving from one physical location to another is surely implicit, if not explicit. Still, the saying and the source have contributed to the dilution of the meaning of journey. More to blame, perhaps, is a bumper sticker phrase of uncertain origin and many iterations: “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Notice how the idea of going from one actual, physical place to another is missing, watering down the meaning of “journey” to the point where it can be applied to anything, everything, and nothing.
The New Age (which elevated Lao Tzu and his sayings) and all its psychobabble latched onto the word back in the 1970s and there has been no turning back. Healing and transformation became a journey, along with your health and wellness journey, your recovery journey, your emotional growth journey, and your soul journey. And, of course, our spiritual and religious journeys.
Now, even unfortunate situations like fighting cancer have become journeys. So have trivial situations, like my hair loss journey. Grief became a journey. Education is a journey. So is weight loss. Business has latched onto the idea with a passion, tracking customer journeys, service journeys, training and development journeys, leadership journeys, workday journeys….
Writers are not immune to the infection. Seldom have I attended a conference where the “hero’s journey” wasn’t held up as the essence of most any and every piece of literature. (I confess ignorance of its finer points.) And, of course, we are each on our personal writing journey.
That’s all for now. While the “journey” journey may be an endless journey, we’ve come far enough on our journey for one day.
Rod, we're losing good words, buddy. We are.
ReplyDeleteA living language necessarily suffers some abuse. Amid the push and shove of daily life in English, words slowly lose some of the oomph with which they arrived. And few words have suffered the belittling endured by the adjective “awesome.” Its root noun originally described the emotions appropriate to a direct encounter with God. The Almighty alone might inspire awe. For several centuries in Great Britain and her colonies only transfigurations of the human form, white bread falling from the sky, and stones rolled without explanation from the doors of tombs deserved the descriptor “awesome.”
American teenagers of recent memory have pretty much taken care of that particular interpretation of the word.
Last August I went to Washington, D.C. looking for something, anything, truly awe-inspiring. On my first-ever visit to our nation’s capital, I hoped to rediscover the first meanings of a three-letter word. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address etched there on the north wall of his memorial came close. So did fifty-some-thousand names on a long, too long black wall, my old buddy Second Lieutenant John Simmons among them. And then it happened. In the grey morning quiet of the National Cathedral, beneath a nave eighty-three years in the making, the word jumped unasked from my mouth.
But once the surprise of my visceral response to Episcopalian architecture had passed, I quickly realized that the surprise was misplaced, a function of being on vacation maybe, the artificial product of a willful intent to find again a feeling that maybe has been here all along. Sitting in our national house of prayer, I began to remember other Hail Marys, some outdoor Glory Bes. I began to think of how something like awe routinely informs my life on the ranch. Of how, a newborn calf – shined black and silver with licked placenta and struggling so to stand on long too long legs-- I’ve crossed myself, looked to an endless sky, and said “Thank you, Sir.”
The inspiring and the inspired among us remain a throwback to another time, back when life reduced to a few undeniable facts, and the consequences of a decision showed up sooner rather than later. But a sense of mystery can live on, the occasional miracle can still occur in this hard century, in this faraway place.
I live among cathedral stones of another stripe. I walk on limestone that makes the bluestem strong, and I see that bedrock honesty, fierce independence, and genuine love of neighbor inform the best of lives. Encounters with the Absolute are a natural and inevitable part of the Cowboy Way, of a life lived in caring for cattle horseback. As a carryover from an idealized vision of America, the cowboy ought to be well-equipped to restore those ideals, to show an inevitably urban populace the collective and individual rewards of a rural ethic.
At least, isn’t it awesome to think so?
Thanks, John. I have complained about "awesome" myself, for the very same reason.
DeleteRod, no words are stupid. Just uses of them are.
ReplyDeleteAs stated in the opening paragraph. The effect is the same, however.
DeleteDelightful blog about "journeys."I thought of you today, when an NPR guest expert used the word, "imaginate." As in "We can imaginate what will happen if this becomes common practice."
ReplyDeleteThanks, Patti.
DeleteI agree with your commentary on Awesome. We use it so freely it loses its meaning. Then sometimes it's only awesome to the one saying it.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
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