“Slow down driver, wanna stay alive, I wanna make this journey last” — Paul McCartney

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This song from McCartney’s first album after forming the band Wings always brings me to a reflective moment. The song reminds me of something I always told my children as they were growing up:  “Always remember, it’s all about the journey.”

My two children, now adults, remember me saying this to them almost as ritual in our household. And often they would roll their eyes or nod in agreement just so they could move away from the dread of another “talk.” I did the same thing whenever my parents broached a teaching moment with me. Getting older is when I realized that those teaching moments are an integral perspective to always keep in front when navigating life.

Time moves fast, and many of us take it for granted. We take photos to try and capture time, but in the process of getting the “right” shot, we often miss the moment. Today in life there are no second chances. I am a photographer and enjoy capturing images of life within and around me. But if we really want to experience the journey, we need to sometimes go it alone. Watch, listen and become the moment by leaving the camera home.

Both of my children have embraced the journey lesson within their own lives. My son even has my advice tattooed on his shoulder as an emblem of a father’s words to a future that awaits him around every corner. My daughter, a teacher, inspires children to be the best they can be but always to be themselves first and try new and exciting things even if they seem “icky” in the beginning.

I surmise that is the reason I hold explorers in high esteem. A man or a woman who chooses to move from a comfortable seat at the table of life to journey the unknown, to explore the confines of a sometimes not so hospitable place is both courageous and inspirational. It is the human spirit that compels us to do so — to explore is to find.

But what does the explorer say when they return and put memory to page?  It was not the beginning or the end that most inspires, but the journey itself. The heroics, the tragedy, the turmoil and struggle, the joy, the sorrow and that utter feeling of being alive, all of it holds the essence of that journey. That “sense of being” cannot be replicated. To journey is to move from one posture in life to that of another while absorbing the experience of the people and place that surround it all.

To touch a point on a map that beckons our arrival, then set foot on that spot to collect what has been there waiting for us to find is what makes life special. To explore is to see life, and most assuredly it is the journey itself that is life.

That journey can also be waiting right outside our door every day. A walk in the woods, a hike up a mountain or a paddle down a stream, at work, at play, in the presence of many or at a table for one, it is not the beginning or the end but the journey within the moment that is special.

RJ Heller, photo

About 12 years ago, just prior to leaving for Alaska on a six-day dogsledding adventure into the Yukon Territory, I took time to reflect on why I needed to make that trip. That reflection ended up in a collection of prose and poetry I went on to publish. My view of that journey taken so long ago has not changed at all. In fact, I believe it is even more embedded in my soul today.

“We experience because to do so means we are alive. We experience life through our interactions with people and place. Not because they are there, but because a small piece of who we are is. We are in all places.

“From the day we are born, a small fragment of who we are, or more importantly, who we will become is waiting to be found. Waiting to be realized and at the same time become a part of our life.” — “A Journey” from the book  Holding Grace by RJ Heller.

Time quickens as we grow older, and with it our memories begin to fold in upon themselves. That is why making new memories is so important when afforded the opportunity to do so. To journey provides us the ability to make memories.

Life is about seeing and experiencing. If we put off doing that, we detract from what our life was meant to be, we muzzle the potential and in the process close doors of opportunity that could have been good or bad. Never knowing the outcome is even worse.

© 2023 RJ Heller

Published in The Quoddy Tides, Eastport, Maine: August 11, 2023