The Road Well-Traveled (Part II)

 I’m still pondering the road well-traveled.  There may be a Part III—or there may not.  I have no idea how long this “pondering" will go on.

All of us walk the same road—the well-traveled road of life. Since the world began every human being has walked this same road. Deep are the furrows, rough is the path, worn down by the imprint of countless feet, dampened by many a tear, churned up by a myriad of worries and troubles, and occasionally made smooth by the joys experienced across all time. It is a road well-traveled.  Every traveler on this road has cried, laughed, eaten, hurt, worried, and died.  There are no exceptions.

In youthful arrogance we sometimes think we choose our own road, but from the moment of our birth, we are placed on this common road, not by choice, but by Life itself.  We may choose our own detours along the way, taking a left turn here or a right turn there, but all of these unique individual turns and twists remain part of the main road—the road well-traveled.

It gives me some comfort to know that my parents and grandparents walked this road I am walking and their grandparents before them. It helps to know that whoever may read this blog is walking that road too. There are no lone travelers on the road.  We walk the road always in the company of those who walked it before us and those who walk it with us now. We are never really alone.  This road is a well-traveled road.

All of us walk this same road no matter the color of our skin, no matter our privilege or disadvantage, no matter our circumstance.  Such distinctions make little difference on this road.  If we are alive, if we are human, we travel this road.  It is a road well-traveled.

“I have always known,” wrote Ariwara No Narihira in the 9th Century,

 “that at last I would take this road, 

but yesterday I did not know it would be today.”