The Voyage In

The Torah describes the existential journey of our ancestors Abraham and Sara with a famous set of textual redundancies: God had said to Abraham, “Go out from your country, your place of birth and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” Why not just say “Pack up and go to place X?” Why embellish the command by mentioning not just your native land, but also your birthplace and your father’s house? The answer to this question takes us to the heart of how difficult it is to change your life, especially as you get older and become set in your ways.Nikolas Westerhoff has a doctorate in psychology and is a science journalist in Berlin. Some years ago, he wrote about the gradual decline in curiosity and interest in new encounters after you reach your late twenties. He noted that this is true across cultures. After a flurry of novel activities between ages 21-35 (typified by marriage, building family, developing a career) openness to new experiences tends to decline gradually until about age 60. But interestingly, after that, some individuals seek out and chart a brand-new course, and may move in unexpected directions.What must it be like to be Abraham, entrenched for a lifetime in a particular culture, language, family situation, mailing address, familiarity with the dry cleaner, Internet provider, the local watering holes, the pagan temple with the fastest service? And then along comes God knocking at his life. To extricate himself from all that Abraham has ever known, God reminds him that he has to acknowledge and set himself free from everything that has made him inert and come to claim his time and attention. Not just his nationality, but also his local culture and habits (represented by his birthplace) and perhaps most difficult of all, family tradition and expectations, (“father’s house”). In order to be the person he must be, Abraham must opt for exile, choosing an utterly unknown direction. But why doesn’t God at least tell him where he is going?Because in essence none of us really know where we are going. We confidently ensconce ourselves in our houses, lock our front doors, file away our insurance policies, measure our investments, calculate our real estate value, lightly grasp our membership cards, glance in the mirror, and get set for a soft landing. But all of that can get blown in an instant. Why not get ahead of the curve, God suggests to Abraham? Why not “go out” now and discover the as of yet unseen? “It is not down in any map; true places never are,” Melville reminds us in Moby Dick.But don’t harbor the illusion that any of this is for God, the verse reiterates crucially. It is לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ – go out for yourself, or “to yourself”; don’t do it for me or anyone else, God says, do it for you. Make the change that you’ve always wanted to make, and become the person you’ve always wished to be. Still, in order not to live with regret, you may have to radically expand and reconstruct your comfort zone.And it begins just with the willingness to even contemplate such a shift. I would guess that Abraham didn’t simply pack the Samsonite bags and head out the next day. Most of the challenge was undoubtedly a mental one, wrapping his heart around the severing that such a dislocation entails. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” writes Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, an idea echoed more recently by Dr. King: “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”Not that any of this is easy. In English, the word “travel” is directly linked to the word “travail”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines travel: 1. “Bodily or mental labour or toil, especially of a painful or oppressive nature; exertion; trouble; hardship; suffering.” 2. Make a journey, from one place to another. Movement—emotional and spiritual above all—is painful at any age.I imagine Abraham crawling out of his lifetime of habits existence, slowly gaining speed, leaving behind his hometown of Ur of the Chaldees, as well as the familiarity we all crave and yet become suffocated by in the long run. Because in the end, the real enemy is our own fear of trying something different, saying the unexpected, embracing the outsider, bucking the easy choice, and knowing in all of that we will be thrown off balance and wonder what we are doing. Kierkegaard sums it up perfectly: “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”God informs Abraham that the result of this journey will have a ripple effect far beyond Abraham’s family: “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.“ The founder of monotheism changes the fate of history just by leaving home and following the revolutionary path to enlightenment. He is unperturbed by the unknown. He is guided by values, not evaluations, principles as opposed to pragmatism.I have reached an age where I know what is expected of me. There are certain things that are appropriate now, retirement supposedly on the horizon, the major events in the past, the crucial life decisions already spoken for. Things are…set, aren’t they? Or if they are not, isn’t it a bit too late to undo what was done? Just try to get comfortable and ease into the home stretch. And I listen to all of this well intended cultural advice and think to myself:Why? Why can’t I try new things, go to new places, take new risks, write new books, contribute to others, form new intense bonds, strengthen old relationships, venture out and be creative in brand new ways, and voyage in to self-discovery and revelation. Why?Why not? The best is yet to come.