At last, the day of my departure arrived. Long before my journey began, I used to gaze out into the distance and dream of something beyond the bleak and barren flatland where I was reared. On an exceptionally fine day I could make out the vague forms of majestic mountains far away rising gloriously into the sky. At night I’d close my eyes and see visions of a magical place overflowing with life and color, where people danced and sang and lived together in wonderful closeness and harmony. Thoughts about that faraway place overtook my waking hours and made every second of my existence in the changeless gray domain of my birth unbearable. Up in those heights, I knew, people were living real lives, doing amazing things, and that was where I longed to be. As soon as I was of age I would leave and seek the El Dorado of my dreams, the place where I truly belonged. So much awaited me there, and as soon as I was old enough, I set out.

I faced frustrations from the very start. Orienting myself towards where I knew the magical mountains to be, although, as usual, they weren’t visible through the mist and gloom, I started out. It would be a long trek, but I hoped to reach my destination within a reasonable amount of time. I was taken aback by the reactions of people I met on the way. When I told them where I was going, they smiled, shook their heads, and informed me I was going in the wrong direction. Were they joking or trying to mislead me out of meanness? They seemed friendly enough, so it was hard to understand why they were misdirecting me, but I knew perfectly well where the mountains were—I’d spent my entire youth looking toward them—and I wasn’t going to be turned around by their ignorance or malice. My mantra was forward and upward.

In the end, though, I had to give in, and it wasn’t just because armed men in uniforms forbid me to continue on the path I was on. I could elude them, if necessary, and it might even be fun doing so. What finally persuaded me to change course and abandon the path I was on was the advice of learned old men whose wisdom, experience, and benevolence was apparent in their wrinkled faces and long white beards. They patiently explained to me in scientific terms why I had to go in the opposite direction to reach my destination. Their arguments made sense to me while they spoke, but after I parted from them, the logic trickled away like sand seeping from a clenched fist. Science was like that. It made sense on some level, but was at odds with what I felt with my senses. I accepted that the earth revolved around the sun, but it sure felt like it was stationary and the sun rose and set around it. The insistence of those scholars that I had to travel in the opposite direction to get to where I wanted to go was completely counter-intuitive, but their arguments wore me out.

In the final analysis, it was easier to follow everyone’s exhortations and take the long way than to oppose them. To this day, I don’t know if those people were correct, or if they were misleading me, either intentionally or because they believed it to be true. What did it matter? It was up to me to decide, and I followed their advice and injunctions rather than my own inclinations. Once I took the route they prescribed, it became, for better or worse, my road, and it turned out to be interesting enough, even though I sometimes wondered if I hadn’t missed out on a smoother, faster one. I was disgruntled, however, about turning around and changing direction, and carried a chip on my shoulder instead of being exhilarated about being on my way. I thought only about my destination and what I was missing out on because of the detour I was taking. I was stuck in a joyless limbo until I would reach that place where my real life would begin.

I trudged along in that frame of mind, for a long time, looking inward and oblivious to my surroundings, sulking because my destination was further away than ever. Gradually, however, I began to derive pleasure from the rhythm of my own footsteps, and became aware that the terrain around me had changed. Without realizing it, I had reached the foothills of the great mountains, and was instantly overcome with a new regret—that I missed out on how I got to where I was going. My obsession with reaching my destination spoiled the journey of getting there, a journey that had already consumed half a lifetime. It occurred to me that I’d already reached my goal. I hadn’t originally intended to scale the mountain, but only to join the joyful community inhabiting it, living life to the fullest. Where were those people? Were the ordinary folk I met on the trail, who were not that different from myself, the ones I had once imagined, from a distance, to be almost a different species of being?