Life is a journey and for those who still know how to drive a stick shift, we know there are times when it is necessary to down shift. Throughout the year our speed will vary and throughout our lifetime, we have starts and stops. We turn to the left, turn to the right, make U-turns, and occasionally get stuck in the mud or the snow or the congested traffic. We drive in pleasant conditions and once in a while, adverse conditions.
The highway of life is strangely enough, like the highways that millions of people travel every day. Others merge onto the highway and travel alongside us for a short while, or sometimes for a longer distance; then one or the other of us takes an exit. If we are lucky, we have passengers in our car who are with us for most of our journey. Those others who travel next to us, generally, are strangers. If we travel in sparsely populated areas, we may occasionally get a nod or a wave from the car we pass that is travelling in the opposite direction. When we have come to the end of one segment of the journey, we get out of our car, leaving it where we parked it. Our bodies are the vehicle in which our souls travel and like our automobiles, when we come to the end of our journey, we exit them.
Each soul’s journey is to be taken alone. We may slow down and take our time as we gradually, but finally, come to a full stop. We may accelerate, believing that we are in a race for time, only to collide on sudden impact with the end of the journey. The passengers, who come along for a time, share our ride and keep us company, must also take leave when their journey is done.
We can choose our speed at any point along the route that we are taking. We can align ourselves with the natural rhythm of the seasons, down shifting for the autumn, moving at a slower pace through the winter, accelerating in the spring, and building to a comfortable speed for the summer. At any time of year, at any season in our life, we can remember to acknowledge those passengers beside us on the road of life. They, too, are trying to get home to their source, where they will leave behind the ego and the physical body. We will all get there sooner or later. We will arrive at our destination only to find the beginning of another journey. We must make the journey count because the destination has been within us all along.
