The Journey

 The Journey

By Bobby Neal Winters

It is important to “clean house” occasionally.  I mean this literally and figuratively. We’ve got to stop, take stock, prioritize, and move on.  Long trips can give us an opportunity to do this.

I had the pleasure of being gone to Paraguay for three weeks and then coming back.  Three weeks is a long time to be gone from home.  If you want to travel light you have to put thought in how you pack. There are decisions that have to be made. Priorities set. I follow the maxim: “More underwear, fewer clothes.”

But then you pull yourself out of your home, the environment you’ve created for yourself.  There are things there that you use everyday that you don’t even think about because they are always there.  There are things you do everyday that you don’t even think about because you always do them.

So on a long journey, you stop everything. You shake off your habits--at least the nonportable ones.

Then you come back and it’s decision time: Which of these habits do I start again?

Almost the first thing I did on the very first morning I was back was to fry myself some eggs in my little cast iron skillet.  That was easy.  I’d missed it.

I also mowed my lawn that very first day back.  That was an easy decision too. When you can’t see your house from the street, it’s time to mow the lawn. 

Then there was the scary decision: Do I take up woodworking again?

Over the better part of the last year, I’ve been turning my garage into a workshop.  I’ve gone to a lot of time, trouble, and expense to create this workshop because of my woodworking habit.  I had established the habit of doing a little something in the shop everyday, but it had been pushed to the side for three long weeks.

When I came back, I had a choice: Take it up again or not?

Well, this isn’t meant to be suspenseful, so let me tell you now, I did.  I’d left a big project halfway finished, and I’ve gotten back into it.  I’ve also begun some smaller projects.

Woodworking is hard; it requires an investment of time and money; but it is something that I want to be a part of me in the long run. 

This process--leaving home, paring down, starting over--reminds me of the story of Noah’s Ark.

Noah, under God’s direction, packed only the bare essentials for what he needed: His family and enough animals to start life again when the trip was over.  Then everything was disrupted. He and his family were on a trip for 40 days and 40 nights, enough time to disrupt all their habits.

Then they started over.

Noah was a farmer, so he planted a vineyard. He made himself some wine and he got drunk.  Then something happened that has difficulty coming through translation. 

We are spared knowing the exact thing by changes in time, changes in custom, and perhaps the delicacy of transcriber or two.  Suffice it to say that even though God had flooded the world to start over again, there were still problems.

People can’t leave all their problems behind them because people are the problems.  I’ve heard this encapsulated in the phrase: Wherever you go, there you are.

But you can make an attempt to shape what the future will look like. I want to continue woodworking, and it looks like I will. 

I also have a couple of writing projects I want to work on. Returning to these has been more difficult for me.  Explaining why would take us too far afield, but suffice it to say that I am working on it for the same reason as the woodworking: I want it to be a part of who I am.

We are all on a journey through space and time.  We have a choice on what we take with us on this journey.  And wherever we go, there we will be.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.