Traveling Stories: Lessons from the Journey of Life

By Terri Clements Dean, PhD

Traveling Stories is a collection of teaching stories drawn from the author’s experiences as a therapist, as a traveler, and as a person in search of the answers to life’s most important questions.

Each of the stories is complete in itself, easy to read and entertaining, yet each contains a bit of wisdom that can be applied to any life. The organizing metaphor of the collection is “life is a journey” and the journey is toward greater wholeness. The stories in the collection reveal some of the ways that we learn how to be wholly ourselves and to participate deeply and fully in life.

Together, the stories describe the journey and offer advice about how to get the most from it. They offer the opportunity for insight without preaching, judging, moralizing, or dogma, gently urging the reader onward. Told with humor and compassion for the human condition, they nonetheless encourage a fearless, responsible involvement in life with all its complexity.

The book draws on a deep study of several disciplines, including Jungian psychology, anthropology, and philosophy as well as the author’s travels, clinical work, and personal experience. Its key points are these:

• Life is a journey toward wholeness.
• Life’s lessons are found on the journey,
• The lessons are offered freely and come in many forms, most importantly in the stories that we tell and hear and in the symptoms and symbols that demand our consideration.
• Our part is to be honest, pay attention, trust the process, and work hard.

The stories are simultaneously grounded in everyday life and awake to the possibilities for transformation bound in the mysteries of being. Symptom, symbol and ordinary experience reveal themselves to be the teachers that help us answer our deepest questions, learn more of the truth of who we are and can become, and open ourselves to greater freedom and a more precise intention for our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781939472175

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A TRAVEL STORY

it is good to have an end to journey toward;

but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

—Ursula K. LeGuin, American novelist

Life is a journey. The destination is both known and unknown. We know that we travel always toward death, but beyond that, we can only wonder. People with religious beliefs hold convictions, or at least hopes, about the beyond; other folks simply accept that they do not know. Despite the uncertainty most of us carry on as if we were trying to get someplace—someplace we want to be.

The journey may be smooth or bumpy, fast or slow, uphill or down, on or off course. The traveler may become weary or realize she's brought the wrong clothes. She may find herself in alien lands with bizarre customs or discover to her delight that she fits right in with her fellow travelers. Like any trip, almost anything can happen. Sometimes our travels leave us feeling lost and unsure of ourselves, fearful of what we do not know and can't control. But the journey is also the teacher, life's lessons freely offered and waiting to be learned. All we have to do is show up and pay attention.

One time, I left for a short trip to visit my mother-in-law at Christmas, traveling from Atlanta to Dallas. I checked my only bag; I've always liked the freedom of walking through airport terminals with only a handbag. I even checked my coat. It was warm in Atlanta, and the forecast for Dallas was mild. The plane left on time.

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the pilot announced that Dallas had received an unexpected ice storm, and we were being rerouted to St. Louis. St. Louis in December! Well, ok, no problem. We'll go to St. Louis and get another flight either on to Dallas or back to Atlanta. Except that when we got to St. Louis, we were in the middle of a blizzard, and our flight was the last one in before authorities closed the airport.

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport looked like a refugee camp. Peopie slept on the floor, covered with coats and other clothing. The vendors were out of food. No luggage circled the carousel. So there I was in St. Louis in the airport in the middle of a blizzard with no coat, no clothes, not even a toothbrush.

I'm not sure how, but the airline staff found a hotel room for me. The thermometer read twenty degrees when I went outside to get a taxi. I worried I might freeze before a taxi arrived, but magically, one appeared and drove me to the hotel, which was also out of food as well as towels. Since I had no clothes, I didn't really want to bathe anyhow. I just wanted to sleep and go someplace else—Dallas, Atlanta, or anywhere south.

Next morning, still no food, but the hotel personnel did manage coffee and transport to the airport. My flight to Dallas was the only one out that day. When we landed in Dallas, my bag was waiting, as was my mother-in-law. We had a lovely Christmas.

Life is like what occurred on my short trip. Anything can happen. We are often at the mercy of circumstances and past choices—unexpected weather and checked bags. We can be left without resources and discomforted for a period of time. We may get help from unexpected sources or not. But time passes, more things happen, we make more choices, and the journey continues.

I had a destination in mind when I left for Dallas, but it wasn't, in fact, a destination. It was another point on my life's journey, just like St. Louis, and even Atlanta, which was home then but not now.

The important thing about my trip to Dallas was what it taught me about the journey. At the time, I was not at all focused on what I could learn from the experience. I was irritated, anxious, cold, hungry, and worried. I was focused on figuring my way out of the situation or on berating myself for how stupid I was to check my coat in the winter, no matter where I was going or what the weatherman said.

I first noticed what I was given on the Dallas trip when coming home from traveling in France. I had once again checked my bags through to the United States, but I wound up spending a night in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport. I learned you could wash your clothes, dry them with the hotel hair dryer, and have a nice clean outfit to wear, even if it's Sunday, and every shop is closed. This realization came while I sitting outside on a bench, crying. There I met an Australian family who was in the same situation but seemed pretty jolly about it all. I recalled the trip to Dallas via St. Louis and thought: Well, it seemed like a disaster at the time, but it was fine. I survived, so maybe this current disaster will work out okay too. This lesson and others like it are not easy to learn. Tiny nuggets of wisdom are often hard earned.

When we are young, we hurry toward adulthood with its freedoms and privileges. In early adulthood, we often work toward success, financial wellbeing, or dream of having a family. When things are good, we endeavor to make them better or at least hold on to what we have. When things are bad, we hope for better times or despair that things will remain the same. Most always we strive for greater happiness, satisfaction, or security.

Perhaps we discover along the way that our goals have been the wrong ones, that what we thought would bring us happiness, satisfaction, or security did not. Maybe we begin a quest for greater freedom, authenticity, integrity, or honor. And life's journey continues.

We meet folks along the way who tell us stories about their journeys, and each of their stories is a teacher. Our job is to pay careful attention and absorb the lessons. The stories we share in creating are also lessons to be learned. Often we discover their meaning when we reflect on them or retell them to someone else, but the lessons are always present if we are open to their message.

On the pages that follow are some of the lessons I've learned and some of the stories I've been told or helped shape. I hope reading these bits about people's experiences helps you value your stories in your journey through life for the treasures they are. It has been said that God created humans because he loves stories. And it may be that he created stories because he loves humans. Stories are gifts as well as creations. They nurture us, grow us, and teach us who we are and are not and who we could be. So love your stories, tell them to the right people, and listen carefully when new stories come your way.

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

—Barry Lopez, author, Crow and Weasel

THE QUESTIONS

The important thing is this: to be able

at any moment to sacrifice what we are

for what we could become.

—Charles Du Bos, French essayist and critic

There are really only four questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What matters? How do I live my life? Consciously or unconsciously, we spend our entire lives trying to answer them.

We seek answers in many places. Sometimes our search takes us into foreign territories with strange customs or directly into the path of danger. Sometimes we are stuck at home with old answers that no longer satisfy. We may go to great lengths to learn our necessary lessons, but life itself is much more generous than we think. She offers our lessons freely and without restraint, and these lessons make their ways to us in the small things, in the unexpected, in the struggles, and in the ordinary. Our task is to be impeccably honest with ourselves and pay careful attention.

Beware of anyone who pretends to have the answers for you. The answers are different for everyone. This is both the blessing and the curse. We are blessed that we have been given the authority to choose and to find the unique expression for our lives that is right for us. Yet, make no mistake, there is a curse there, too, at least for those who wish for easy answers. Life is a journey and a quest. Like all quests, there are pitfalls and predators, and one can lose one’s way.

Getting lost assumes many forms. We can lose ourselves in another person or in a profession or job. We can lose ourselves in addictions to alcohol, drugs, spending, sex, food, possessions, and, most often, to a self-image that supports the ego but not the soul. We can also lose ourselves in self-pity and blame.

Or, we can make the commitment to be steadfast in our quest for the answers that are right and true and honest. Some of these answers do lie in the collective. Our uniqueness in no way relieves us of our humanity. We are one and we are part of the whole. Old truth is always relevant.

Some lessons come from our teachers: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, Mrs. Bailey from the fourth grade, pastors, priests, and rabbis, experts of various genres, and books, always books. Some lessons come from experiences, good and bad. And some lessons come from mystery: the symbol that keeps showing up, the inspiration that slips in when you are otherwise engaged, the dream that wakes you and shakes you, the moment when you see what you could not see before.

Our task, our mission is to gather, to sort, to analyze, to engage, to allow ourselves to be taught. This is an act of individual choice and of personal will. Absolutely no one can do this for you; you are indeed on your own. It’s often hard, and we weep with the sadness of our losses and tremble at the fear of the unknown. We long for easy solutions. We are shamed by our failures.

But we journey on. As we go, the pieces of truth collect around us, shape us, and orient us to the world. We are one, and we are part. We travel in knowledge and in mystery. It is the way of things, and it is good.

There really are only four questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What matters? How do I live my life? It is possible that we will never know the answers with the kind of certainly that modern people feel entitled to, but in the end, what matters most is not our conclusions but how we travel the journey. We must trust the process and carry on!

The only source of knowledge is experience.

—Albert Einstein, German American physicist

THE LESSONS

Whether called fate, destiny, or the hand of God,

slender threads are at work bringing coherence

and continuity to our lives

Over time they weave a remarkable tapestry.

—Robert Johnson, author and Jungian analyst

Life is a journey. It’s a strange journey in that we begin it with no map or itinerary, no guidebook, and no clear destination. Nonetheless, we travel, and together with our circumstances and our fellow travelers, we create the map, the guidebook, and, perhaps, even the destination. Because we know so little when we start, we have much to learn. We are not even sure where to look or whom to ask. When we were small, we learned from our parents and the other big people around us, and many of them were good teachers, and some not so good. Most of what they taught has served us well, but some of their instruction has betrayed us.

We learn from our own experience as well. We’re the little child who falls when learning to walk, the new skater with skinned knees, the rejected playmate with hurt feelings. We marvel the first time we see how those funny little shapes make letters that form words, or when we hold our hands out just right, the pitched ball finds them. We learn from all these experiences.

Life continues, and we grow, and we learn more. We begin to see ourselves as individuals with desires and feelings and ideas that are different from some of the people around us. We start to question our teachers. We begin to understand that we need our own answers. There may be times when we become convinced we have all the answers—during adolescence, for example. During that stage, we may discover truths our elders have somehow missed or forgotten. We choose to go forward and remake the world into this new and better shape.

As we journey on, we comprehend more and more about ourselves. Bits of truth and wisdom find their way to us, and we, not the world, are re-shaped and re-made by them. Each phase of life creates a demand for new answers, but the four questions of the first chapter still remain: Who am I? Where do I belong? What matters? How do I live my life?

Every other question is simply a part of or a combination of these four questions. If we wonder about our career, we are asking who am I, where do I belong, what matters, how do I live my life. Questions about relationships, values, activities, affiliations, interests, even the smallest choices of everyday life all resolve themselves into one of these four. Every day, all the time, and everywhere, we are involved in answering the questions, and their answers become the fabric of our lives.

So, where do we find the answers to life’s questions? How do we learn what we need to learn in order to lead the lives we were meant to live? How and by what means do we become whole and wholly ourselves? Who and what can we trust with our lives?

On any given day, my computer screen offers an array of answers. If I can’t find the one I need there, no need for worry; TV, radio, and an array of advice magazines have a bunch more. While there might be a bit of repetitiveness across sources and time, still all those sources are hard at work providing me with suggestions for how to improve my life, giving me answers to questions I didn’t know I had and, occasionally, to the one question that currently leaves me perplexed. When these fail, I can consult one of the many advice and personal growth books, or I can research the question on the Internet. If my question is large and important, I can take it to my priest, rabbi, or spiritual advisor or consult a professional. I personally use all these resources and a few more.

Sometimes we struggle to find our answers. We ask, we seek, we try promising solutions; we fail, and we start again. Sometimes it’s a gentler process. The answer is waiting before the question arises, and we simply reach out and take it into ourselves. All too often, however, we miss the answer because it didn’t look the way we thought it would or because our attention was elsewhere, or, as frequently happens, we were avoiding the question. Sometimes we are given wrong answers or even good answers, but they don’t satisfy our deepest questions.

My homepage, writers, and the media offer excellent advice, but those answers, true and good though they may be, might not be the answers we can use. With all the advice we are offered throughout our journey, what we really need is simply to learn the process.

So how do the answers come? What do they look like? How do you know when to leave them and when to stake your life on them? What do you trust? How can you know who you are, where you belong, what matters, and how to live? The simple answer is: be honest, pay attention, trust the process, and work hard.

We have a part to play in our life lessons, but we are not totally in control, and that is the frightening part. The answers come the way they come despite our wish for transparency or for timeliness. We want clear solutions right on time. More often than not, things aren’t clear, and the timing isn’t ours. But rest assured, the answers come, and they can be trusted. The universe, life itself, is our best teacher and wants the best for us. She offers the lessons again and again, if need be. They come in different forms until we connect with them. Here are some of the ways life’s lessons are offered and what to look out for:

• Increment

• Incident

• Intention

• Intuition

• Inspiration

Increment

This is what we generally think of as learning, the gradual acquisition of skill or knowledge via traditional routes. It includes what we are taught by others (school, parents, instructors, bosses, coaches, mentors) and what we learn ourselves by trial and error or self-instruction. It also involves knowledge that is acquired deliberately and practiced in areas such as mathematics, sports, reading, music, language, manners, procedures, techniques, and skills. It happens for all of us in the most ordinary way. We grow, we learn, we mature in a process that is linear, gradual, and incremental. This type of learning happens over time; we barely notice it until we look back or someone points it out to us.

Incident

The second type of lesson is familiar as well; it’s our old friend experience. Along the way, things happen and these happenings are teachers. An ordinary event teaches a valuable