When “Journey” Isn’t Quite the Word
Lately, it seems that everything is called a journey. A parenting journey. A healing journey. A self-discovery journey. Even the most fragile and chaotic experiences are now wrapped in this word — like it can hold them, explain them, give them shape.
A friend recently told me, “I love the journey you’re on,” referring to this new chapter in my life — becoming a father. She meant it kindly. It was a gesture of acknowledgment, of warmth. And yet, something about it didn’t quite land.
Because what I’m living through doesn’t always feel like a journey. Not in the narrative sense. Not like something with a map or a purpose or a destination. It feels more like weather. A shifting sky. A moment-to-moment unfolding that resists the arc we so often try to place upon it.
That’s where the word journey can become slippery. It can make things sound noble or neat — like we’re always becoming, always evolving, always going somewhere meaningful. But sometimes, we’re not. Sometimes we’re just in the thick of it. Sometimes we’re being dismantled. And sometimes we don’t need to reframe that. We just need to be in it.
The word journey isn’t wrong. It’s not even a bad word. It can be a beautiful word — helpful, even. It can give context to growth, continuity to chaos. Sometimes it’s exactly the right container. But sometimes, it’s a mask. A softening. A way to give form to something we haven’t yet fully touched.
And that’s what I’m really exploring: not whether we should use the word, but whether we’re aware of how and why we use it.
Are we using journey as a way to honor what’s real?
Or are we using it to hover just above the rawness of our own lives?
Language shapes the way we experience our lives. And the more we let it become automatic, the more we risk living in its shadows — becoming bound by the very frameworks we’ve created. Sometimes, the words we use to describe reality begin to define it. And then, without noticing, we become servants to our own ontology.
Maybe there’s no need to find better words.
Maybe there’s just a need to pause — and feel whether the words we’re using are keeping us connected,
or pulling us just a little too far above what’s actually unfolding beneath our feet.
Sometimes, we’re on a journey.
And sometimes, we’re just here — muddy, awake, and unsure what comes next.
And perhaps, it’s never just one or the other.
Perhaps we’re always both — walking the path and standing still. Becoming and being.
Moving forward, while also arriving, again and again, into this exact moment.
So maybe the question isn’t whether we’re on a journey or not.
Maybe the question is: Am I here for it?
Am I in contact with what’s real — beneath the words, beneath the roles, beneath the story?
Not to fix it.
Not to name it.
But to meet it.
As it is.
Now.
Journeying, in stillness that moves.