Monday, September 19, 2016

Of Journeys and Far-Away Places

A motif frequently appearing in literature is "journey to a distant land." The content of the destination changes with the ideas of each writer, but the motif is always expressed in terms of a journey to some distant location expressed as a far away land, a distant city, or far country—but always somewhere away-from-here.
 
            The son of an indulgent father received what likely amounted to half the father's personal worth.  The son journeyed to a far country (Luke 15:13), a location that likely represented to the lad freedom from parental influence, which translates into fun and good times—since he squandered everything in "loose living." When Abram lived in Haran, he was directed by God "go to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1), where, he was promised, his progeny would become numerous and he would be a blessing to "all the families of earth." In this case the then unknown distant land (Canaan) held the promise of material prosperity and universal influence.  The author of Hebrews took the image of the distant land and conceived it as a celestial city, "whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:8-12). The imagined destination was a spiritual ideal, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22-24), representing to this author a place of heavenly rest (Hebrews 4:1-13), and the journey led ultimately to the afterlife.
 
            In John Bunyan's thinly disguised allegory of the Christian experience, the protagonist (Christian) journeys from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, which is imagined as a 17th century vision of Heaven.  The journey to that ideal place is cast as a pilgrimage, which is fraught along the way with temptations and threats to Christian's progress in faith.
 
            After the ten year long Trojan War, Odysseus, King of Ithaca returns to his native land.  In terms of physical distance Ithaca is not far, but in terms of time, it still takes him ten years to reach home, beloved Ithaca and wife Penelope. His journey home is an epic tale filled with numerous dangers, and "home" is everything positive that the word evokes.
 
            Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick (1851) describes the ill-fated voyage of the Pequod, a whaling ship commissioned ostensibly as a profit venture.  Her captain (Ahab), however, had another goal, and turns their journey into a quest to kill the white whale, Moby Dick, that earlier had destroyed another vessel and maimed Ahab in body, mind, and soul. The ultimate destination is thereby changed from a successful and profitable return to home port, to Ahab's revenge on the whale. The poem by William Butler Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1892) poetically imagines a getaway house in the wood amidst natural surroundings, but thematically the poet is yearning for what can only be found away-from-here: "an ideal place where he will find perfect peace and happiness."
 
            In the modern world we conceive journeys and destinations in linear terms: a beginning that leads forward to some destination—somewhere in a different location. The ancients, on the other hand, thought in cyclical terms, perhaps because their lives were more obviously dependent on the cycles of nature: the earth dies in the winter but renews itself every year in the spring—a perennial cycle of life. Neither one's personal history nor history as human experience was conceived by the ancients as linear progress toward some ultimate goal.
 
            For example, Empedocles (5th century BC) introduced the idea of repeated world cycles: because periods of "Love and Strife" alternated, the history of the cosmos was viewed as a series of cyclical periods (Nahm, Greek Philosophy; fragment 66, 110). Hesiod (around 700 BC) saw reality as an alternating series of five world ages (Works and Days, 106-201). Marcus Aurelius said "…the universe is governed according to finite periods (of coming to be and passing away)" (Meditations 5.13)—each period began and another cycle ended at the same point.
 
            Might the ancients have been correct after all? Our tiny blue and white planet, for example, is on an infinite journey of repeated twenty-four hour cycles around its sun.  Hence one's personal physical age should not be thought of as linear sequence, but rather should be calculated in terms of a succession of repeated cycles around the sun. We don't really go anywhere in life; we just repeat the cycle every twenty-four hours.
 
            That is not true of the universe, however, which is expanding outward all around (if it is circular) at a rapid rate of speed on a wild ride toward some unknown destination; hence the universe clearly appears to be moving "somewhere" in linear fashion.
 
            Whether we conceive our journey as being locked into repeated centripetal cycles or caught up in a linear centrifugal force, which concept adds more significance to life, the journey or the destination?
 
The Greek poet C. P. Cavafy in a short poem about Odysseus's journey home (Ἰθάκη, Ithaka), claimed that journeys were more significant. What do you think?
 
 
Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Charlie,

Your essay caused me to consider a typical human life includes (not consist of) a series of journeys-each with a final destination. The journeys can be physical or they can be emotional. Humans have the ability to perceive their live as they wish, so these series of journeys could be perceived as one over riding journey. They can also be merely illusions of journeys.

Thanks for the motivation to think about it!

Jim

Charles Hedrick said...

Good Morning Jim,
I agree; life includes a series of journeys of various sorts. Education, for example is both a mental journey, as well as a cultural journey. But your comments do provoke two questions for me--more for what you do not say than for what you did say.
1. If life does not "consist" of different kinds of journeys, of what does it consist (i.e., be made up of)?
2. Can you provide an example of an "illusion" of a journey?

Cordially
Charlie

Anonymous said...

Charlie,

Re: Your two questions to me:

1. I intended to say life consist of more than just journeys, e.g. thoughts, emotions, sleeping, day-to-day experiences, etc. I imagined your word "consist" indicated exclusivity.
2. An example of an illusion of a journey is a life pursuit of some idea that does not exist, e.g. superstitions, afterlife, repeated lives, miracles, gods, sin, etc..

Jim

Charles Hedrick said...

Good Morning Jim,
I looked through my essay and could not find that I had used the word "consist." I put it in quotes to indicate that it was your word. It is a provocative word, however! I would say in general that there are no set elements of which a life must be made up. We invent our own journey (whether real or imagined). In short, Life is what one makes of it--as the poet said: "I am the master of my fate; the captain of my soul" (Invictus by Henley).
Cordially,
Charlie

Anonymous said...

Re: "Consist" not in your essay

Charlie,

I apparently mistakenly thought you did use the word "consist", so I now stand corrected. In any event, I agree with your 2nd reply statement: "We invent our own journey whether real or imagined".

Jim

Charles Hedrick said...

In the West we have a psychological predisposition to think in linear terms--that is to think is terms of beginnings and ends. Even the Bible is organized in that way: the beginning of all things (Genesis) and the end of the present world (Revelation). Hence our psychological sense of an ending determines how we view reality and makes its way into all aspects of life. Not all see reality this way, however. In Hinduism, for example, the souls of human beings are ever on a series of seemingly endless cycles of births and rebirths in which the end is also a beginning.
Cordially, Charlie

Elizabeth said...

Good afternoon Charlie!

Don't Hindus (or at least some version of Hinduism, meaning Indian teaching) also believe that life is being dreamed... That everything evaporates and nothing really exists outside our consciousness? Future and past are perspectives, not places, and are illusionary concepts since time only exists in the now.... Nothing exists beyond now, except in your mind. Do you see "future" as being only a mind-movement? In other words- no one has ever seen it because when it comes, it comes as the now. (Can you tell I've read Eckhart Tolle?)

Sorry for the late response- our 13 year old son is keeping us quite busy these days with school activities and such like!

Thank you as always, Elizabeth

Charles Hedrick said...

Good Morning Elizabeth,
One does find in the religions of India the idea that everything is an illusion (Maya). "The physical universe, the individuality of the soul, rebirth itself, are all illusions," such as "one meets in dreams or at the hands of the conjurer" (Noss, Man's Religions, 276). And I agree that neither past nor future are "places." The present, however, does have a past (which no longer exists and must be reconstructed)and will have a future (experienced as an incoming second). We only experience the past in our minds as ideas, and can only experience the future as present. Our visions of the future are all illusionary. Incidentally, I had never heard of Eckhart Tolle, until you mentioned his name, and as a result I looked him up on line--my wife keeps telling me that I need to get a life.
Cordially,
Charlie

Elizabeth said...

That is too funny Charlie... I do the same thing when I've never heard of someone, and I often think to myself "What would I do without this instant access to information at my fingertips??" Last night, we watched "Sergeant York" for the first time (I'd never seen it before) and our son wanted to know if he was a real person... So we looked it up on our iPad and instantly satisfied our curiosity. Do you ever ponder the vast difference it takes (time wise) to look up trivial/ biographical information about people compared to when you were in college? Elizabeth

Charles Hedrick said...

You are correct that the internet speeds up access to information but one must still be cautious, since the information one settles on amidst everything available may be flawed in various ways,
Cordially,
Charlie