I’m half tempted to just post a video of Don’t Stop Believin’ today and calling it good enough. But that feels like cheating, especially after writing such a short post yesterday. So allow me a moment, dear readers, to get a bit more serious.

Many say that life is a journey, and I think there’s a great deal of merit to that. From cradle to grave, we each wend our way through this world. We meet people. We contribute to our communities. We touch other lives and are touched in turn. By the time we reach the other end of our journey through this life, we have made many memories and left many footprints — usually metaphorically but occasionally literally — behind us. These things create a record of our lives, our travels, and our impact.

I think we often tend to mistake the destination for the journey itself though. We think the destination is the point. I think this often diminishes and disrespects the journey itself. After all, what if the destination is unimportant. What if there ultimately is no destination at all? Perhaps this is the journey of the wanderer or wayfarer, where the whole point is to see what there is to be seen? What if the goal is simply to touch lives and be touched in return?

Of course, when it comes to life, the final destination is the grave or the urn. (Alas, the EPA tends to frown on actually scattering your ashes these days.) Is there something that comes after that? I don’t know. But what I do know is that if there is, that will be an entirely new journey. I’m too focused on the current one to give it much thought.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenged2024. For more information on the challenge and a list of prompts, check out this post by Yvonne Aburrow.)