How Well We Make the Journey

You could be on the edge of greatness and not even know it. Choices to make. Which way will you go? Forward, backward, off to the side somewhere? A detour of sorts? Those are often the most interesting trips we take. Unintended destinations full of surprise and delight.

Years later we may look back with fondness, remembering the happy accident that led us there. It could be a person, place, or thing. Maybe the detour isn't some physical road not traveled but actually turns out to be your life partner.

Seriously, it happens.

Such moments get folded into our saga, become part of our lore. The telling changes over time, as events recede into the past and lose clarity. They move from the realms of memory into imagination, and the same story is never told twice.

It all takes on a grandeur that perhaps is unearned. That is one way of looking at it. The sense that we are just individuals on a large planet, each indistinguishable from the next. Grains of sand on the beach, water in a swift moving river, stories of a world.

Another way is that the uniqueness is what defines us, not only as individuals but also as a species, as inhabitants of a lonely rock in the middle of space headed toward ultimate destruction. Yes, we are very small alone and together, but it's a miracle that we even exist.

There are days when this line of reasoning makes sense. Other times we merely feel fragile, vulnerable, irrelevant in every possible way. But like the grains of sand, the water, and the stories, these feelings also pass.

Everyone ends up in the same place eventually. Some take longer than others. Maybe greatness isn't in reaching the destination but in how well we make the journey.