It’s All in the Journey

A Brief Meditation on the Meaning of the Word — and Why It Matters

“Wheel in the sky keeps on turning

Don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow” — Journey

Journey is a word from Middle English, a language that emerged from the Germanic fog around 1100 and pulled from Anglo-Norman continental languages starting around 1250. English borrowed the Old French word jornee, meaning: a day’s travel, a day’s work. Like soup du jour — same root. All from the Latin diurnum, which means: the daily portion.

A journey is a day’s travel, as a journal is a day’s writing. A long journey is a chain of daily progress, each building on (or recovering from) the one before. A life’s journey is but a string of days lived. The celebrations, the labor, the struggles, the triumphs, the defeats, the sorrows, the great joys, the subtle grace notes and quiet moments.

To lose sight of today is to lose sight of the journey itself. Yesterday and tomorrow are not relevant. Today is the journey. The Lord’s Prayer asks, “Give us this day our daily bread…”. We seek only today’s portion, the diurnum, for today’s journey. We require only the strength for today’s work. No stockpiles needed. No excess.

Travel is powerful because it is a physical act with spiritual implications. I walk out my door with a bag I can carry, abandoning the vast majority of my material possessions, taking only what I need for the journey. I leave the house ahead of the sunrise, the full length of the day at my disposal. I start my engine with fresh hope and a mind on the road ahead, shedding the weight of relationships and responsibilities, regrets and routines at my door.

I venture only forward, relegating my whole history to the rapidly vanishing image in a rear view mirror. Only what lies ahead matters. There is only today. Only the journey.