Wandering Is the Destination
In an age of Google Maps and Waze we no longer meander. Wandering is not what we do. It is what we read about. With their iPhones in their hands, our children have never experienced getting lost. They are out of touch with their parents and can get to their destination by opening an app or making a call.
And yet the Torah is written through wandering. Our people’s meaning is discovered in its travels. I recall fondly. Some of our best adventures are found when getting lost. It was when we happened into a restaurant that was not on the itinerary or when we wandered into an unintended store and struck up a philosophical conversation with the owner or when we mistakenly took a wrong turn down an unfamiliar street and discovered a Jewish star.
As soon as we escape from Egyptian slavery, we are walking in the wilderness. It is there that the Torah is written. The Torah is not about its promised destination. It concludes before we even arrive. To do so would suggest its meaning is found in our arrival. Instead, it is about the wandering.
In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit laments the fact that traveling has become less important than arrival. She writes,
The indeterminacy of a ramble, on which much may be discovered, is being replaced by the determinate shortest distance to be traversed with all possible speed, as well as by the electronic transmissions that make real travel less necessary…. I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.
God makes us walk in circles. Forty years of wandering was always God’s plan. “God led the people roundabout, by way of the wilderness.” (Exodus 13) It is not because the destination is not known. It is instead because the destination is the walking. That is the road to discovery. That is the source of meaning. That is the Torah’s promised land.
People think wandering is aimless. It is antithetical to getting from here to there in the shortest amount of time. They believe meandering is directionless. It is not.
Perhaps this is the Torah’s greatest lesson. Wandering, meandering, rambling are how we find meaning. Let’s get out there and go for a walk—at least when it is not so cold. Let’s leave our iPhones behind and the worries about getting lost for another day and embrace the slow pace of three miles per hour.
Otherwise, life will continue to move faster than the speed of thoughtfulness.