Richard Mckenzie Neal

The Long Road Home . . .: a Philosophical Journey. Richard Mckenzie Neal

By this point in our lives (my target readers) we've all heard the old adage "You can't go home." But what does it mean? As life winds down and the drone of existence begins to wane, I'm feeling an intangible desire or need to reach back into my past and reconnect with a by-gone time and people . . . living and/or dead. It feels like an elusive melody that seems distantly familiar, yet strange and unidentifiable. If all the above sounds like a premonition of the inevitable, I agree and accept that my time is ticking away. But it's not about dying . . . it's about going home! I'm not afraid of dying, but I do struggle with the reality that I will no longer physically exist. I have to wonder if the term "going home" isn't a misnomer and maybe . . . just maybe, we're trying to return to "Neverland" (Fridays With Landon). When we were very young we searched for that elusive, utopian community . . . and studies have shown that in our declining years, we slowly revert to our childhood. Another line-of-thought is that it's all just a mirage. We know and accept that a man can be dying of thirst, in the middle of the driest desert, and his mind will anesthetize him by creating the illusion of an oasis. If we can acknowledge that phenomenon (the mind's coping mechanism) then it shouldn't be much of a stretch to reason that the elderly possess those same innate coping capabilities . . . to ease their journey home. Of course their mirage would be about "going home" . . . not to a place, but to another time. What is the driver for this (apparently) universal pilgrimage? I have to wonder, even compare it to an addict's motivation (The Path to Addiction) . . . one more trip down that path of pleasant memories even as the host is being sacrificed.