The Road Goes Ever On and On: Journeying Away to Come Back Home
If we want to return to ourselves, we must follow the Way.
I have always loved road trips. There’s something healing about leaving your home and then coming back again. The road is a paradox — it takes you away from home so you can come back. One might say, “What’s the point in leaving if you always return to the same place?”
The point is the journey. Every road is more than a road. It can be just a road if we refuse to see beyond. But it can be so much more if we choose to see. It can become The Road. The Way. The Tao. In fact, every road is the Tao — if we want it to be that. Every ordinary road hides an extraordinary road. It’s a call, an invitation.
Every 3-4 months, my wife and I feel it’s time to hit the road. We pack our bags and get in the car. We go. We follow the call. Bilbo put it best:
“I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell. I might find somewhere where I can finish my book. I have thought of a nice ending for it: and he lived happily ever after to the end of his days.”
He wanted to go on another adventure. But why? Because he remembered the thrill of coming back to himself. On his first adventure, he discovered himself — the Burglar — and the exhilaration of that discovery was forever imprinted on his soul. He wanted to hit the road again to experience it anew.
The famous Soviet song-writer Yuri Vizbor wrote,
“There's no wiser and more beautiful remedy for life’s turmoil
Than the song of tires in the night.
With the long, long gray thread of the trampled roads
We mend the wounds of our souls.”
The road mends you because it takes you back to yourself. Every road is an anticipation of the encounter with yourself. It’s the ultimate homecoming experience. When we encounter The Way, we return to ourselves. To mend the wounds of the soul we must encounter The Way.
Every once in a while, we all need an adventure. We get too tired and need the song of tires. What will it do to us? The road will cut us off from our life’s turmoil so we can encounter the Way and return to the sensation of “I am.” We crave the encounter with the Way. We hear the call of the Way and must follow:
The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
The road can be tiresome, but it’s more tiresome to stay put and not to follow the Call of the Way. If we want to return to ourselves, we must follow the Way. It’s always there and back again. The sensation of “I am” is always the gift of the Tao. As Jesus said,
“I am the Way.”
This reminds me of Manalive by G. K. Chesterton. The better of two ways to come home.
ReturnIng to previous places is another road. I think of it as "re-membering." I reconnect with parts of myself that I left in those places and in those people.