Benched #25: sharing the road

“Those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.”

That quote from C. S. Lewis has been stuck in my head for the past few days.  It’s challenged me to think of it as a question: Where are you headed and who’s going with you?

It’s the other side of the issue of living in the moment – a theme I seem to keep picking up from people I’m around lately. Living in the moment needs to be more than just living moment-by-moment.  It can’t negate the concept that there’s a bigger picture. In the words of the business events I scribe, there needs to be a road map.

My literal road map in the last week has taken me to Lancaster, Washington, D.C.,San Francisco, and Harrisonburg, VA, where an old friend – Bob, a professor at James Madison University -- took me to see a couple of benches on the campus. The first is called the Kissing Bench, because, the legend says, those who kiss on the bench will end up married. 



Then, as we walked back to our cars to go to dinner, he showed me another bench, tucked in an alcove.  I liked the contrast of the starkness of the setting with the worn wood of the slats – it’s clearly much used.



The next day, on Skyline Drive, my wife, daughter, son and I took a leisurely stroll through the woods, passing a deer that was blind in one eye.  Creepy. 



Further on, Grace and I took a break on a roadside bench.



Friends.  Family. Joining me in bench-sitting.  More to the point this week -- becoming fellow travelers.  Not so much in this one thing that I’m doing, but as Lewis expounds, discovering friendship in a shared interest.  As I look around, I find that I’m missing fellow travelers for much of my ongoing journey.  It may be that my new career isolates me.  Perhaps it’s how busy people are.  Could be where I live.  But it’s something that has to be a part of my road map: journeying together.

Except for the four college-age guys in the car that rear-ended mine on the way back from the mountains.  Note to self: don’t travel with people who tie a shopping cart on top of their new sports car.

There are times a lonely road isn’t so bad.