Pilot Episode

I'm pretty late to the whole blog/twitter/social networking scene. I've had a Myspace account before (seems juvenile now) and I enjoy Facebook (great timewaster). But I've never been compelled to blog. Mostly because I'm really boring. No one really cares what I think. I don't have a cause to push or any particularly refreshing insight into...well...anything. So why blog? I dunno. An old friend that I just got back into contact does it and it seems like a great way to vent and relieve personal anxiety/stress. Her blog is not only helpful, but seems to be therapeutic. So, I'm approaching this as self-therapy: not to gain readers or to impress anyone. We'll see how it goes. It may not last long.

A good place to start I guess is the title. It is a line from the opening chapter of John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley: In Search of America. Here's the quote in a little more context:

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. (Steinbeck, Travels With Charley, p. 3-4)

While Steinbeck is specifically referring to his cross-country trek, I think it's pretty obvious that he's discussing a certain outlook on life. No matter how much you plan, there is always something that is just around the corner that has the potential to knock you off track. Luckily, I think I'm like a "blown-in-the-glass bum": I can go along with change fairly well. I don't like it most times, but I can fairly easily accept that God/Providence/fate/karma is greater than myself and that there are bigger forces at work in my life. Some would call that a fool's logic, and that's fine. But I'd argue that if we cannot hope or trust in something bigger than ourselves, what are we living for?

Anyways, I've started re-reading Steinbeck's Travels this week since I'm going on a road trip to the beach at the end of the month. Not only is the book a classic "road trip" kinda book, it's also a fantastic view of what America was, is, and can be. If Walden and Huck Finn mated and had a child born in 1962, it would be Travels With Charley. It's one of those books that I can re-read it several times and get something different out of it each time.

So wherever you are, whatever journey you're on or about to take, remember that our plans are made to change. Go with it.