If one more person speaks of going on a journey without actually holding a passport or at least an overnight bag, I’m gonna scream.
Just recently an old colleague told me of the “journey” he’d been on since he woke up partially blind one morning and doctors discovered that a clot behind his right eye had robbed him of sight.
It’s OK. They operated, and after open-heart surgery he can see again.
But, mate, that’s not a journey. That’s a nightmare!
Then there’s another associate who, after years of sloth, has simultaneously taken up jogging and blogging and now preaches fervently about his journey to well-being and the marathon of the mind.
Puh-lease, you just ran around the block a couple of times.
With roots in US celebrity therapy-speak and West Coast ashrams, “the journey” spread across the globe like wildfire in the mid-noughties and now substitutes for any experience from spiritual enlightenment to weight loss.
Suddenly we’re all metaphorically on the move. And it’s not like we’re going to the seaside either.
Take “life’s a journey”. Yep, last stop – crematorium! Why can’t we at least go somewhere nice?
When businesses speak of taking stakeholders on journeys and politicians invite the public on journeys, it’s a non-transferable ticket to tough times.
Incidentally, if Christopher Pyne pulls up outside my local school any time soon on the road to curriculum reform, there’s no way I’m getting in the car with that strange little man.
The overuse of the phrase has become so acute that X Factor mogul Simon Cowell last year banned contestants using it.
“I hate people saying ‘you’re going on a journey’ because you’re not going on a journey. You’re on a talent show,” Cowell growled.
But let’s not stop at the journey. Let’s throw in “the dream”, “passion”, “passionate”, “wellness” and “mindfulness”.
Since when did the whole world sound like they had picked up the Dummies’ Guide to Deepak Chopra at the newsagent’s till?
Now, this is a guy who really does go on journeys – first-class all over the world, paid for by the same people who pay for the “premier hotel of his choice” and the escalating “honorarium”.
The guy is so enigmatic that he’s the Nostradamus of the New Age.
“The best way to get rid of the pain is to feel the pain. And when you feel the pain and go beyond it, you’ll see there’s a very intense love that is wanting to awaken itself,” Deepak says.
Be sure to remember that next time you drop an anvil on your toe.
There’s a site that generates Deepak Chopra quotes from random words in his Twitter stream and, honestly, it makes at least as much sense as his official utterances.
Take, for example, “self power is the continuity of intrinsic destiny” or “the physical world expresses total reality”.
Sounds so wise, doesn’t it?
Of course we’ve arrived at this point just as social demographers predicted.
Driven by the baby boomers who now have enough money to seek meaning for lives spent making it, we’re trying to tend to the overgrown gardens of our souls.
Why then do I feel like I’m being taken for a ride?
Perhaps … hrm, hrm … because I’m a journey-least.
