Whether we’re traveling abroad or navigating everyday life, our journeys will always contain challenges and trials.
While traveling, our flight might become delayed, we could get lost in an unfamiliar city, or perhaps we struggle communicating in a foreign language. Obstacles in our everyday lives might look like troubles at work, conflict in relationships, health issues, or even the prison of acedia or apathy. Such obstacles can often feel like Sisyphean tasks—a phrase alluding to the Greek myth of Sisyphus and his continuous attempts to push a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll down again, referencing a challenge that seems impossible to overcome.
In travel and in life, such circumstances are unavoidable. Challenges happen to all of us, and it’s unlikely that we will have a trip or a life that is truly trial-free. Unlike Sisyphus, however, we don’t simply have to watch them happen, becoming enslaved to their existence. With the perspective of the pilgrim, such trials on the path can instead become opportunities for growth.