On The Road

For the past few years, I have read Kerouac around my birthday. It's like a present to myself. An escape, really. My own personal birthday adventure. While I am firmly planted right here with no hope of new atmospheres anywhere in the future, Kerouac never fails to take me on his adventures. He tells of them in such a way that I feel I am riding in a limo going 110 or that I am in a jazzy lounge breathing in music right there with him. As exhilarating of an experience it is to read my favorite novel, On the Road, it always leaves me saddened. When am I going to get to have an adventure of my own? Now, I know it is not plausible to drive across the country on a whim just to find a "Dean Moriarty", but it would be nice to do something.


Earlier, I was staring at the books piled up on my dresser; then, I looked over at the picture of newborn Asia. I looked around our humble home, at the snow piled up outside on the cars. I thought about me going to college to try to make things better. I decided that I am on my own adventure, right NOW. I am "on the road", if you will. Sometimes we all like to complain about our journey. Sometimes it seems like it is taking forever to get to our destination. But like Sal (Kerouac's fictional self), in On the Road, what if we get there and it is not what we thought it would be like? What if we find what we are looking for and it is not as good as we'd counted on it being? That's why the journey is important. The journey is where we have the most fun, learn the most, and meet those crazy characters we eventually call either a friend or a memory. The journey IS the story; Kerouac knew this. That is why he called his novel On the Road. You hear constantly that it is about the journey and not the destination, but once it really plants itself inside of you and you really grasp it, the journey is so much more fulfilling…and appreciated.