Bright Road

Robert Brady

[I]n the beginning was the yearning — to seek what could be sought, find what could be found, learn what could be known — to go beyond mountains, know beyond deserts, discover beyond oceans…

Where that way would lead, and to what treasures, none knew; the first treasure was the journey itself, there to be traveled and lived, the trace of a pattern in the great ongoing mosaic that is human history, and as the picture grew, we travelers grew as well, into new realms and distances, new cultures and minds. All it took was time and effort, as new horizons unfolded in footsteps, at a camel’s pace, the speed of sails, in our long journey to now.

The world is a mind, where there are traces, paths, trails, highways, expressways, leading to futures of mystery our ancestors long ago heard whispers of in dreams… And we here, standing where we are in this world to which the old road has led, do we know where we are, any more than those early travelers? When you recognize that the pulse now living in you is the same that lived in the first human who set forth, and in all those who led to you, you realize that you have traversed the silk road to get here, and have a road of your own ahead… Those lives of old now look with your eyes upon this future, where we travel the silk roads of ourselves, thread the new world we have become…

The mind is a world, where we ourselves are now the unknown territory, the unexplored space on the map, source of the new. What treasures are there? Like the road of old, this new road leads to a deeper melding than ever before of lives and minds, locales and cultures into what has become the metahighway, along which travels — not at the speed of camels or sails, but at the speed of light — our most prized commodity. What will we discover in ourselves? Where will it lead us, this bright road?

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Author

Robert Brady

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Photo by Teresa Ha