Pilgrims

Twice in the past few days I have read similar versions of the following story (which I paraphrase):
“A troubled pilgrim, exhausted from the journey, asked a sage for help. The sage gazed compassionately into the pilgrim’s eyes and after a time he spoke, “I can offer you one of two things – a map or a boat.”
The pilgrim thought a few moments and then said, “I’ll take the boat.”
The gentle sage kissed him on the forehead saying, “Go then in peace. You are the boat. Life is the river.”
I supposed it resonated with me because I was … am … that pilgrim. Feeling unmoored and adrift, I ache for “home” without knowing exactly where that might be or precisely what it will look like when or if I do find it.
Feeling like I don’t fit, I transpose that feeling onto so many people who are rooted in this place. Rooted and complacent in this organization or that group. Sometimes, I resent their unquestioning acceptance that they belong; that they are at home.
But this story reminds me that home isn’t a place … although it very well might be to some. We carry home within as we journey. And life is a journey.
Yes, we are all pilgrims, on a journey; it behooves us to listen to these words of wisdom from David Foster Wallace…
“Our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.”