Fellow Travelers

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Long ago, a group of people of all walks of life embarked on a pilgrimage. None of them knew each other yet they were traveling in the same direction, and as it became clear that they were all on a journey to the same place the fellow travelers stayed together ~ if only for safety ~ and started to tell each other their life stories.
As they reached Canterbury all stories had been told and each of them could enter their destination unburdened...

In this day and age we travel further and more often. No longer is the longest trip one can dream of a Cathedral on the edge of the Kingdom. We have traveled to the moon and back ~ so certainly any place on the earth should be within reach if you really want to get there...

Yet the stories are still there. Each story as unique and individual as those of that group braving the dangers of the road on their way to Canterbury. And whether we are actually on a trip to some far away place, or on a passage to a closer, much more intimate destination ~ we are all on a journey on our personal path.

We are all fellow travelers.
For some of us the goal is the same. For fewer still the road to that goal leads in the same direction. And eventually we hope to reach that goal unburdened.

Like with that group of travelers so long ago ~ the true value doesn’t seem to lie in just reaching the goal, or in the journey itself. The significance is found in what is done during that journey. For that group of people who became travel companions ‘by chance’ ~ telling their stories to each other was a way to come to terms with what had happened in their lives and how they had handled it...

Today, that is still what walking our life paths is all about. Coming to terms with what has happened, the choices we have made. The situations we have found ourselves in and how we have handled them.
And as we come to terms with our lives, the stress starts to flow away. We become more relaxed; unburdened. Free to reach our goals ~ whatever they may be.

On one hand you might say that not a lot has changed in the past couple of hundred years.
On the other hand, life was comparatively simple back then. Brutal yet simple.
Nowadays we claim to be more civilized. And our lives have gained complexity exponentially! There is nothing simple about it.

And sometimes it is a good idea to remind ourselves that we indeed are fellow travelers on a path...
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