The Way of the Traveler – This Week’s blogs
Posted by Marc Shiman on March 11, 2006
Over the course of the next week, I’m going to devote several entries to a book I picked up a few months ago called The Way of the Traveller, by Joseph Dispenza. The sub-title of the book is Making Every Trip a Journey of Self-Discovery.
Dispenza really struck a cord with me on this book. Not that he got it all right – in fact, he missed it… badly. But the book really got me thinking on a number of issues.
He likens the “journey” to the adventures within Greek and Roman mythology. His five stages of the journey
- The Call to Journey
- The Preparation
- The Encounter
- The Homecoming
- Recounting the Tale
The guy does a simply outstanding job of taking a new model… completely new…. Yet…
I think he’s the one that drove me in the direction, but I feel the book completely misguided in the way it interchanges the words “Journey” and “Travel”. It suggests that any travel is a journey. Yet I would argue that not all travel is a journey, and journeys are made of a much larger number of activities than getting on an airplane and going somewhere.
I’ve stuggled with what the boundaries are for a journey, but let me offer a few characteristics: Journeys involve going somewhere or doing something new; they involve discovery (they better or this doesn’t belong in this blog); they have a beginning and an end (The Homecoming and Recounting the Tale).
On Dec 2, 2005, I ran a half Marathon. For someone who has been as out of shape as I have been over the past 20 years, this was a journey indeed. The journey did not begin at race day, but the day I signed up to run it. Immediately, I grabbed magazines, books, and visited websites. I went training and running. I bought supplies. I spoke to people.
I never got on an airplane, and I never packed a suitcase. The journey began a few steps from my front door. But see a “journey” in this light, and Dispenza’s book has considerably more meaning.
