Worth listening to I think. Journeys have become a modern cliché. It is even in the title of my main blog! I can't recall hearing so much about journeys in my youth, perhaps because most of us travelled far less, or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me! Alan Watts died in the early 1970's, so that would tend to prove me wrong, except that he spent much of his life in California, which many believed gave us a foretaste of the future!
Agree with the sentiments, but I never thought that "life is a journey" meant that the destination is the important bit. Quite the reverse in fact. Is it just me?
ReplyDeleteOn reflection I think you are quite correct! The idea of a journey in this context is about learning/discovery along the way rather than where you end up. I guess that is still different from Watts concept of life being like music though.
DeleteI remember the first time I crossed the Murray River Bridge on foot. The river was the border between Victoria and New South Wales, so in 1961 I could honestly say I had been interstate!
ReplyDeleteOnce I got the first passport and spent 1966 in an overseas Gap Year, you could not keep me at home :) Every mid June, find me at the airport, ready to head off for 5 weeks overseas.
But life as a journey was a religious belief that has been adopted into modern, non-religious English. "There is no such thing as chance in the Christian’s journey through this world. All is arranged and appointed by God". "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. Acknowledge him in all your journey, and he will make your paths straight."
Interesting. I came from a fundamentalist King James Bible world, and was educated in a Book of Common Prayer world where there was a little more emphasis on the sacramental.
DeleteI had of course forgotten about that other C17 work important to nonconformist Protestants, "Pilgrim's Progress", and the whole concept of a "pilgrim" reinforced in many hymns. In that context I think it was less about learning from experience and more about withstanding all the obstacles and temptations and somehow getting to heaven, which was the real and only object of life on earth. So in that religious context it was very much about a destination.