Reflections on evolution

focus on their careers and remain single and independent.

This is only the beginning and leads to adventures as an adult.

One takes the external physical trip to new places, to savor new sensations. The first boast, train, and plane rides are rituals. The fascinating travel experiences are woven into a personal tapestry of memorable sights, sounds, and feelings.

The possible exceptions would be the jaded, weather- beaten businessmen and airline crew who rush from airports to station through time zones. To them, the whirl of constant motion dissolves the flavors and essence of a country and in its people into a blur.

On a higher level, a voyage is therapeutic. From a detached distance, the perspective is different. One can resolve a problem without being weighed down by the clutter of superfluous details.

The second journey of midlife is subtle and significant. It occurs on a spiritual and psychological plane. At middle age (35 to 55), one embarks of an inner searching for the self.

This journey to wisdom and grace starts with a milestone: a sudden illness, a long trip, a new job, a new home, marriage; or the crisis of separation, divorce, the death of a close friend or a family member, the loss of a job, early retirement to shift to another career.

The sudden change jolts the individual into rethinking and analyzing his place in the scheme of things.

At the crossroads, one is forced to reflect and to qualify, to take risks, to innovate and expand.

Father Gerald O’Collins of the Gregorian University in Rome has described the second journey as an anxious, depressing trip to seeming “meaninglessness.”

The journey-crisis “in the afternoon of life” can be compared to the ancient journeys of the Odyssey and the Aeneid wherein the heroes were driven from their familiar environment. They were forced to attempt new projects and to travel strange roads.