‘We shall not cease from exploration’

“How are you doing?”

 This must be one of the most frequently asked questions on the planet, in whatever language. It’s a convention. A way of breaking easily into a conversation and to that end, its fine. At best it gives us an opportunity of a snap shot of what is happening in someone’s life right now. (At worst it’s part of a conversation of the mutually deaf and disinterested)

But how about a different question:

“How is your journey going?”

Life is a journey. It is not just a series of unrelated events, the last of which is called ‘death’. When we treat it as such, we end up with a question like, ‘how are you doing?’ or its variants such as, ‘how’s school?’, ‘what do you want to do when you grow up?’, ‘how’s the job going?’, ‘how are the kids?’, ‘how is it going juggling all those things going on?’, ‘how’s your health’, ‘how was the holiday?’, ‘how is retirement?’. There is nothing wrong with any of these questions, but they all lack context. The context of a journey. Every event is a dynamic part of a larger story of a person’s whole life journey.

This isn’t a new thought, it’s the recovery of one of the oldest ideas out there. Traditionally the idea of life as a pilgrimage, a liberation journey[2], of discovering deeper meaning and purpose, of ongoing thresholds and transitions, were the fabric in which life was understood. Every life was an emerging story, a journey, that sat within a larger story that stretched back to ancestors and forwards to at least the next seven generations ahead[3]. Even death wasn’t seen as an event, it was a door way, a threshold, a crossing over a river into a new but thoroughly unknown territory of life’s journey. The deepest wisdom believed that we came into the world hard-wired for a journey; a liberation journey, that would continue to reveal to us and the world what our unique contribution would be to the ongoing creation of the world.  Deep thinkers, like Jung, believed our real-life work didn’t get going until the later chapters of our lives journey. The early chapters were just part of the preparation for the journey ahead. Sadly, many people forsake their journey at the point when it should just be taking off.

Nelson Mandela called his autobiography A Long Walk To Freedom[4]. A liberation journey of his own inner potential, as well as that of a nation (The two are inseparable), not an ‘event’. At the end of the book (written when he was 66 years old, when many people are thinking of retiring), he says:

‘I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter. I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment…I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended’.

This is the language of a continuous journey, not a destination.    The language of a journey of liberation, a liberation of our unique gift to the world, is a life-time pilgrimage. We often view Mandela’s achievement in 1994 as the peak of a mountain in his life, but he never did. The twenty minutes a day self-reflection that led him to journey from angry young man to deeply empathic elder was as much a part of the journey of liberation. Without that inner journey there would never have been the man who could effectively deal with the outer journey of ending apartheid. The liberation journey was as much inner as outer.

Recovering the mental map of journey, or pilgrimage, creates an entirely different conversation between people. The invitation is to learn together, to get more curious about each other’s journeys and to encourage each other on those journeys.  It is a different language (and so, so much more enriching) than ‘how are you?’!

I’m in a period of rest and reflection

I feel on the edge of a threshold

I’m in the middle of a transition

It feels like the old ‘me’ is dying and something new is wating to be born

I’m thinking new thoughts

I feel like I’m waking up

I am beginning to get the sense of why I’m really here on this planet

I’m dealing with some old blockages in myself to flourishing

I feel like something is breaking down

I feel like I’m in a crisis, but a part of me is hopeful as I’m seeing it as a crossroads

The road is tough right now

It feels like there’s a theme emerging to what my life is about

I feel like I’m lost in a dark wood

I have no idea where this is going or whether it will work or not…but that’s ok

I’m paying more attention to who I’m becoming right now, rather than what I’m doing

I’m trying out this new idea to see if there’s any life in it

I’m having to work out if this new relationship is helping me become a larger or smaller person

I’m having some fascinating new thoughts

Something here just needs to die off, so that I have the space for something new to emerge 

T S Eliot wisely said, “Old men should be explorers[5]’, (he also said, ‘we shall never cease from exploration[6]’). Why? He says we need to learn to ‘be’ who we are (‘be still’) and we need to keep on moving forwards ‘into another intensity’ – we might use the word ‘gravitas’. We know such people when we meet them and they have all made a continual, meaningful, journey across their whole life span.

The invitation is to firstly get curious about our own journey. Where is it right now? Where does it feel like it is moving from? Where does it seem like it is moving towards? How would describe your current situation in ‘journey’ language? Not just in my ‘doing’, but who I’m becoming and what I’m contributing and what legacy I might be seeding. Secondly, the invitation is to get curious in our conversations with each other, with all the people we meet along our own life’s journey. Not ‘how are you doing?’, but rather, ‘tell me your story’. And as they tell you, get even more curious about each aspect of what they tell you – ‘tell me more about that’ – because your curiosity, your seeing them, will be a powerful tool in helping them to see themselves and liberate them on their ongoing journey.

“How is your journey going?”

‘Perhaps a stable order can only be established on earth if people always remain accurately conscious that their condition is that of a traveller[7]’

[1] T S Eliot The Four Quartets  Little Gidding Faber 1943

[2] I’m deeply grateful to Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev for opening my eyes to the richness of this insight

[3] The wisdom of first nation Indians was every decision should be made in the light of its impact seven generations from now

[4] Nelson Mandela A Long Walk To Freedom Abacus 1994

[5] T S Eliot The Four Quartets  East Coker Faber 1943

[6] T S Eliot The Four Quartets  Little Gidding Faber 1943

[7] Gabriel Marcel – Value & Immortality 1951