I’m on a pilgrimage of sorts, a lonely trip into the mountains of Shangri-La, in search for clarity and catharsis.
Clarity I have yet to find. Catharsis, I’m halfway there.
I travel to wander. Pick a destination and head there. The destination is not the point, the journey is. You’ll wander into the middle of nowhere, and you will find unexpected pleasures of solitude, and the beauty that exists off the beaten path.
It’s the antithesis to a more frantic vacation, where the destination out-weighs the journey. Life is hasty enough, why bring it to your vacations?
To counter the panic of life, I allow myself to wander. I throw myself to the whims of nature. It is the allure of being lost, and romance of uncertainty. And with no destination in mind, one will come to you by chance. It is a pilgrimage for a muddled heart.
Isn’t that what life is? A pilgrimage through an endless canvas? Born into shelters, born into shackles, eventually we all must embark on a pilgrimage of our own, along paths well-trodden or paths unexplored.
It is a lonely journey of twist and turns, filled with perils and delight. Along the way we bump into other wanderers. Drawn to weary hearts we huddle, and so friendship and love are born, out of convenience and proximity. Hometown neighbor, high school friend, college roommate, the first people you shack up with in a new town.
We stop and rest a little with the people who offered us respite. Eventually journeys are resumed. Many we leave behind to become faded memories, replaced by many other chance encounters. The special few join us on our journeys, if only for a little while. For some, the safety and comfort they offered was too tender part with and life comes to a standstill. But sooner or later wanderlust holds its sway and they too will be left behind.
But then there are encounters of a different kind, of serendipity. It happens ever so rarely. You unexpectedly meet a voyager from part of the canvas so alien and remote that the two of you might have been living in different dimensions. By all logic and reason your paths should have never crossed. But they did, and your worlds collided and your journeys are irrevocably thrown into disarray.
The world came to a halt. All the mountains you have traversed seemed now to be trivial. You are only a spectre of a bygone life. You know now that the world is infinite. And that person, how can you part from them now, knowing that together your world can be so much bigger, and they give you courage to explore the unknown?
But all things must end. You go on, and the world is a little less stiffing. Once upon a time a stranger filled it, and stretched it bigger.
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