The journey is often more rewarding than the destination

Fr Jason Murphy shares another beautiful reflection in his bi-monthly column Let the Busy World Be Hushed...

As we know well, memories from childhood remain within us the whole of a lifetime and it is from the well of these formative years that all life emanates and it to those years that we return, to draw from, time and time again along our journey’s way.

As children, we use to dread, my brothers and I, the journey we had to make to visit our grandparents in the picturesque village of Collinstown in the County of Westmeath. It was only 40 miles or so from our home in Belturbet until we passed the chapel on the Castlepollard road heading into the little hamlet that encircled a village green, which seemed, in our childish minds, to take forever and a day.

The road was twisty and bumpy once you left the town of Cavan, up the narrow road by the foot of Slighlae mountain, and on through the village of Crosskeys, the towns of Ballyjamesduff, Oldcastle and Castlepollard, by the shores of Lough Derravarragh where once the children of Lir took shelter from the storms of life and on the road to Collinstown.

We’d be huddled together like sardines in a tin, the four of us in short trousers on the leatherette back seat of the red Opel Kadett car, fighting and arguing, pushing this way and that, making room for bony bottoms, stopping and starting for each of us in our turn to alight the car to get sick along the windy roads that took us there.

We drove our father insane with the constant refrain, every couple of mile along the way, ‘are we there yet... are we nearly there yet?’; even though we had come to know every turn in the road, each stone shed beneath a rusty corrugated iron roof, every house and signpost along the way, lying back in the seat getting all the more dizzy as we watched the ash and sycamore trees go whizzing bye, ‘are we there yet, are we nearly there yet?’ A quick slap of a hard hand across the bare legs and we didn’t ask again. But once we saw the shores of Lough Lene on the edge of the village, we knew well we had nearly reached our journey's end and soon we’d be out kicking ball with cousins who had accents as thick as they were at playing football.

We spent the day running through fields and chasing chickens and petting grandad’s big beloved sow until the day would quickly come to a close when the adults had exhausted their chat and it was time for 50ps from grandad and hugs from granny before we piled back into the car for the journey home. And, as it is with life, the journey home never seems as long as the time it takes to get there with the light of the dials on the dashboard to illumine the darkness, the low sounds of Johnny McEvoy from the cassette player and the warmth of the heater blowing air into the back of the car, a blanket across our legs, the sight not now of trees but of stars whizzing by in the darkened sky above as we tried to keep our eyes fixed on the heavenly lights that lit up the galaxy far above.

But despite our efforts to keep the other awake and fight it off, the sleep would take over our tired eyes and one by one we would succumb, one head atop of the other’s shoulder and there the journey would pass swiftly by and we would dream and never awake from our slumbers but for a twitch of the eye ’neath the lights of the broad road of Cavan until we’d reach the street at home and dad would lift us, each in our turn, carefully and gently in his arms and carry us to our room and lay us beneath the blankets without our ever waking. There we would sleep soundly, without a stir and the night would pass and morning would come and we’d wake wondering how the journey had passed, how the night had gone and morning come, without our ever noticing without our ever wakening, all unbeknownst to our tired eyes.

And as each year passes and the distant between the present day and those childhood years grows longer and they pass, the months, each after the other like the miles of road beneath the stars above from Collinstown to the street at home. The truth is that the journey to get there seems to take much longer than the journey back the road.

We constantly look forward towards the destination but lose sight of the journey that we travel to get there, the days we struggled to make ends meet in rearing children when they called on us for their every need and now the echo of their voices is but a far distant memory as the silence resounds from the rooms that were once filled with their call.

It’s not the destination that’s the most rewarding but the journey it takes to get there, the times that appeared to be filled with hardship that now, in hindsight, were most precious years. The journey home is all the quicker, the years slip swiftly by and, if only we could travel that journey again to get there, we’d go through the struggle all over again.

So as we constantly rush and push towards a destination, let us remember not to lose sight of the journey it takes to get there for those are the most precious years.