My daughter wrote a recent blog post about life and railroad tracks.

You can read her post here if you want….

I like reading her writing.

Now, a story that kind of relates to what she was saying is the one where a car journey is described….a car journey that happens at night, when you have to use your headlights to see the way ahead.

The author describes how you can only see ahead a couple of hundred yards in the light your headlights provide….how, for the whole journey, you can only see ahead a small portion of the trip.

No matter how far you have to go, you only see what your light illuminates.

Now, it could be a total freakout.

You could think, “My gosh, I can’t see ahead of me!! I don’t have any faith in this trip….I can’t see the whole distance…”

But, usually, what happens…probably because of past experiences turning out alright….is that we trust that a big journey, taken in small increments, usually turns out OK….and we keep driving….even if the GPS is programmed wrong….even if we end up in what seems like the wrong place.

It’s something about faith, I guess. We keep trying to hit our mark. We trust the headlights.

As far as railroad tracks go, I suppose my own track would be a meandering spaghetti melange of twists and turns, looping and splitting and coming back in on itself…..veering and bouncing….and, probably, sometimes rusting from inactivity.

You can’t drive a train like that….all twisty and turny.

You’ll have a derailment eventually if you try and drive a train like that.

And then, you have a family and the train tracks seem to straighten out….and new passengers get on and get off….but each has a “lifetime pass” with unlimited mileage and…so….sometimes they come and sometimes they go….welcomed at the return.

It’s a blessing …maybe…when the function at the junction becomes “getting the passengers to their destination”. If you can’t figure out where you’re going, then it’s a blessing when the goal becomes, in part, at least, to help somebody else get to where they need to go.

Irregardless, people ride.

If it’s not your train, then it’s probably a train of their own….maybe running on a parallel track….maybe heading off for parts unknown.

Reading Zoe’s post again, and reading her resume of developing aspirations, made me think (JUST NOW!!) that maybe it’s not so much arriving at every destination we set for ourselves….maybe it’s wanting to take the journey in the first place that’s the important part of living.

Anyway, we’re all really on the same train.

We could be going the same direction….to the same destination…and still be taking a different trip.

And the trip never really ends.

You just have to be ready to jump on the train when the conductor calls out, “All aboard!”

You have to be on the train to go anywhere.

 

“two trains” Nicolette Larson