"Are we nearly there yet?"

I recently replied to someone's post on a forum and part of my communication included this comment:

Every experience we have carries much more meaning for us than we can ever imagine.

And the more I thought about it, the more I became reminded of those well worn phrases used by children in the backs of cars going on holiday, "Are we there yet?" or "How long till we get there?"
For me the most exciting childhood holiday was going to the seaside, and on the journey keeping a lookout for that glimpse of blue that said 'nearly there'. The seaside meant so many exciting things to come - and even falling into a ditch full of nettles near Scarborough, or stepping on a jellyfish on Morecambe beach, couldn't dampen the anticipated pleasure of the s e a side!

At some point along this growth of life experience I began to understand the part that the journey played in going from home to seaside, seaside to home, A to B, somewhere to anywhere. The journey became an opportunity to do things not possible at A or B - and so I built up the idea (then the belief) that journeys were not tunnels between two lit up places at either end. But they were meaningful entities in their own right - with their own set of experiences, enjoyments, opportunities, pleasures and learnings. Yes, like A and B, they carried their own particular jellyfish or ditches of nettles, and that was understood as being part of the order or things - part of the way life is.

The learnings gained from "the journey" experiences continue to this day, as I discovered just recently when I had chosen to get from A(shburton) to a nearby village by taxi, only to discover that no taxi was available! The weather was ok, it was dusk and I had little luggage, so I set out to walk the 4 miles. On the flat it would have been a doddle, but the hills are steep in this locale and after about 3 miles the nettles were getting more stings and the jellyfish larger. Then a lovely lady in an old Metro gave me a lift the rest of the way, assuring me "You've walked the hard part - the rest is all downhill," which was nice.
As I lay soaking in a wonderful warm bath in my room at the village Inn, I contemplated what had been useful about the last hour and a half...useful on so many levels...

Life doesn't always provide us with a taxi, and even if it did there would be less to see, hear, feel and understand if the journey was accelerated in that way. And ignoring the significance of the journey for us means we lose the opportunity to learn more (or even anything) about ourselves.
And this goes to the very deepest message in the phrase "Every experience we have carries much more meaning for us than we can ever imagine".