The Blind Man Society

This entry is a shout out to all my fellow wanderers out there.

I was sitting here this morning thinking about my last post re: going into the wilderness, and it made me think about my time so far as a wanderer. There’s all kinds of things I could say about it, but I realized it might just be time to share one of my favorite excerpts which articulates the subject better than just about anything I’ve seen. I don’t just mean wandering on a trip or vacation, I mean finding your way home through life. This is by W. Somerset Maugham, and it is called The Moon and Sixpence.

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”

Personally, I wish I had found this excerpt years ago because it would have helped me to understand myself far better and far more quickly than I did. Some would say the mileage of experience is necessary and knowing it before you are out of the gate is not good. But on this one, I think, having some kind of a road map for these feelings of wanting to wander is helpful. If for nothing else, than to take it to the next level of wandering!

Please feel free to leave any comments in the box below, would love to hear your thoughts and experiences surrounding this one. I hope everyone has a great day, this Tuesday, November 14th!