When did it all become a journey? Not just life in general but experiences. “This _____ experience has been a real journey…” What does this mean? “I’ve really grown during this journey…” Was it a cruise? “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey”. But the definition of journey is a trip between two points – so there actually is no journey without a destination.
Clearly, much of this is convenience-speak. Shit you can feel and spew without actually having to think very hard. Life is a Journey is just short hand for I’m too lazy and lacking in creativity to speak for myself. So I’m just going to repeat some shit I heard someone else say. No wonder so many people think life is a journey. There are so many lazy bastards out there.
What typically follows “life is a journey” convenience speak are the lulling platitudes that are like add-on sauces for this already quite lazy and uncreative diet. It could include remarks like “the universe was telling me” this or “everything happens for a reason” that. The reality is none of this would be falsehood. It’s a bit like me saying “rocks are hard and they don’t usually blow away in the wind.” It just doesn’t bring much to the table. Actually, it doesn’t bring anything to the table. And that is perhaps why it strikes me as crazy that people believe they are actually thinking and communicating when they could just as well be wrapping themselves up with masking tape and drawing on their faces with a Sharpie. But instead, in this world of “not really thinking”, you sit around and nod your head and say “yes, sometimes it does feel like God gets you parking spaces”…(now if he could only get me a fifth of vodka).
Perhaps for us in the age of small luxuries and the priority of ease of use over usefulness, we are trying to make difficult, painful concepts easier to grasp – so we don’t have to work too hard – like when we had to roll down our own windows or actually use an oven to heat up a cold slice of pizza (it was tough in the old days). “Life is a journey” can literally mean anything. It can mean “I’m thirty and still wet the bed”. It can mean “babies are cute and fat”. It can mean “my leg has fallen asleep”. Thus, when you are talking about your life, a complicated entangled snare of physiology, psychology, primordial urges and instincts, you no longer really need to break out in a sweat. We now have spell check for our thoughts.
As we have been reduced to the “ooos” and “ahhhs” of experience with no actual ability to formulate our own ideas, understand our own experience, or god forbid, communicate with our fellow creatures, perhaps it is easier to connect. Sadly, the connection is not with one another but with our love of reducing steps from the process. Typically we are willing to pay the price for this convenience. In this instance however the cost would be meaning itself. Somehow, we still don’t seem to mind.
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