SOURCE: Shelby Starnes - FACEBOOK
When I was 18 I set out on a journey. I rode freight trains, like hoboes used to do, across the country and back. Hundreds of cargo trains cross the country everyday and if you know the right ones to get on, at the right times, you can pretty much travel the country for free. I rode across the Midwest, into California, up and down the west coast, and back across the country to Chicago all over the course of a few weeks.
You can’t have a strict schedule though, obviously.
You can have a general direction of travel, perhaps have a destination in mind, but your journey may take a variety of detours along the way and could take two or three times as long as you had anticipated.
Sometimes you get on a train only to find out that it’s moving in the opposite direction you had thought.
Sometimes you get on a train going in the right direction, but it stops 10 miles down the track and waits for 6 hours due to other train traffic.
Sometimes you can’t even find a train. You wait at the junction, under the viaduct, for hours on end waiting for one to come.
If you get too anal about your destination, about getting “there” by “then”, you’ll be extremely disappointed with the experience. All you’ll think about it these damn slow trains, how you’ll never get to your destination in time, how everything seems to be working against you.
Or you can realize that everything is actually working FOR you, it just doesn’t appear that way when viewed with tunnel vision.
You are seeing a side of the country most will never see, at a pace in which you can really take it all in.
You are experiencing things that most never will, all of which carry valuable lessons.
You are doing what most never will, which shapes your life and character.
Remember: Your destination isn’t going anywhere. You’ll get there when the time is right.
If you’re not enjoying the ride, why are you on it?