Friends and family will tell you I’m fond of the expression “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” If the past two or three weeks have taught me anything, it is that I had forgotten, or perhaps never really understood in the first place, what that expression really means. Canada had become a destination I was focused on, and too many lessons the journey had to offer were ignored or overlooked.
We left Vancouver Island with relatively few resources. Economic circumstances and the expenses of our first year there had bled us dry. After applying for more than 40 summer jobs through the university, I submitted my application for an off campus work permit and we hit the road. I was as much or more determined to remain in Canada as long as possible in hopes things would turn around before we had to leave as I was to witness some of the endless beauty Canada provides and learn from experiences along the way. The possibility of needing to return to the states for a while to try to find work and save up a little money for the coming year was in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to acknowledge it directly because the goal was CANADA, and the journey was secondary. Leaving Canada meant defeat.
As a result, I began experiencing anxiety attacks as the reality we would soon be crossing the border back into the United States couldn’t be avoided any longer, and by the time our car finally seriously broke down in Brigham City, Utah, firing on only three of its four cylinders as we rolled to a stop at one of the city’s main intersections, I experienced a breakdown of my own unlike anything I’ve experienced before. If it hadn’t been for my wife, family, two good friends, and the fact Zeus wouldn’t know how to stop loving me if his life depended on it, I may not be here writing this today.
When you truly hit rock bottom, you’ve really got only two choices: adjust your attitude or give in to self-pity and quit. Fortunately for me, those just mentioned above were quite insistent I choose the former. As a result, over the past several days I have been reflecting more and more on what it really means to let go.
I read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for the first time when I was about 18, and have had an intellectual grasp of the basic teachings of both Buddhism and Taoism for years. But a basic intellectual awareness does not necessarily translate into an understanding. It was one thing to be able to wrap my mind around the concept that the key to inner peace was letting go of my expectations of others and of how life in general should go, but quite another to really know peace will be elusive until I do. Anger, resentment, a sense of moral superiority and false pride, just to name a few, are all the fruits of making my life about the destination and not the journey. I had allowed the goals I was striving for to become the goals I was living for.
I have a long ways to go yet. A nervous breakdown followed by a few days of significant reflection and rereading of Robert Pirsig’s timeless book on motorcycle (i.e. personal) maintenance is only the beginning of a new journey, one that hopefully will continue for the remainder of my life. But I’ve begun opening each day reminding myself to give my plans over to the care of the universe. Shit happens. Cars breakdown, money runs out, the best-laid plans encounter detours, or sometimes don’t work out at all. And all that is to say nothing of the fact that, being human, sometimes we just fuck up. While at the moment I know these are no reason to stop travelling altogether, I’ve also learned I need to constantly remind myself it’s no reason to stop travelling altogether or risk forgetting it. I had my doubts, but my existential GPS was really working all along after all. I’m exactly where I should be.
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