The boy who traveled a thousand journeys

Zane Nelson
Personal Myth Unit
Mythology Period 2
1 / 14 / 2009
The boy who traveled a thousand journeys.

Once there was a boy who loved storybooks. He lived alone and isolated and read stories like there was no tomorrow. Each time he read a story, he felt a profound connection with that story. As if he personally knew the characters, their struggles, their hopes and their sorrows.
Through his reading he learned many life lessons and he became very intelligent. He felt that all he would ever need would be his stories. Because he journeyed through his books so much, he came to say that he had traveled a thousand journeys.
But one day, an old man came to the house of the young boy. Being of a kind nature, the boy let the man stay.
“My thanks to you young man, what may I call you?”
Being slightly arrogant, the boy replied “I am the boy who has gone on a thousand journeys!”
“Hmm,” was the only reply of the old man.
“Then you may call me the old man who has gone on one journey,” he announced proudly.
The boy was incredulous. Who was this old man to boldly make such a pitiful claim?
“Why do you speak such a pitiful claim so boldly?” asked the boy. “Why are you so proud of having only read one book while I have read a thousand?”
The old man smiled. “You misunderstand me young man, I can’t read at all. The only story I have read is the story of my own life. Which may not be much, but I wouldn’t trade in the events of my life for all the gold in the world.”
The boy was absolutely burning with curiosity about this strange fellow now.
“Why is that? Have you witnessed the rise and fall of empires?”
“No.”
“Have you traveled the stars and beyond?”
“No.”
“Have you gone on journeys to defeat a great evil with naught but a sword at your side?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Have you been witness to both love and madness, have you seen human triumphs and human failures. Have you led a revolution against an unjust government or redeemed a relative who was lost in darkness?”
“Nope, nada, no, nitch and zilch.”
Now the boy was just getting mad. “Then what have you done that has made your one journey equal to my thousand journeys?!”
The old man just kept smiling. His reply was only two words.
“I’ve lived.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“My life may not have had anything heroic in it. I may not have done many great deeds or witnessed history in the making. But what I have done is skip rocks on a pond with friends. I’ve danced with a number of pretty ladies (my record being 15 at one dance and man were they all hot) I’ve gone walking through mountains and swam in the sea. I’ve done many little things but above all, I’ve lived.”
The boy, needless to say, was shocked beyond words. What the old man described seemed so ordinary so mundane. Yet it seemed so…………….fun.
The old man nodded.
“You know kiddo, things don’t always have to be great or historic in order to be exciting. Simple things that you do in life can be interesting.”
“But why are such things interesting? I’ve can be so ingrained in the stories I read that it is like I’m their when an evil empire falls or a hero slays a monster. So why are such mundane things so interesting in the face of what I’ve seen?”
The old man actually laughed. “Wow, boy are you slightly messed up. You’ve got such a great gift of reading that you’ve let it become your life. In doing so, you’ve been neglectutating to read the most important story of all. Your life.”
The old man took out an old smoking pipe and lit is as the now absolutely completely shocked boy processed this.
The old man took a puff of his pipe until the boy managed to come to his senses enough to say “neglectutating is not a word.”
The old man shrugged. “I told you, I can’t read. I wish I could though. It would have made a lot of things much easier.”
“But if you’re saying that the most important story in life is ones own life, does that mean I must stop reading?”
The old man coughed on his pipe. “cough cough cough, hack wheeze, spiehteisois. Ahem. Of course not! To read is a great gift that I would give my remaining kidney and spleen for. I’m just saying, you can’t live all your life in books. Otherwise you miss a story of which you are both the author and the reader. Read your books, learn from them and bond with them. But don’t forget to get out of the house and live. Make friends make mistakes, triumph and blunder but above all live. Because you can reread books anytime you want. But you only go through your life once, so you may as well live it. That is why my one journey is equal to your thousand journeys.”
Suddenly the old man seemed very tired. “I need to get to bed. I’m an old man you know. Do you have a place for me to sleep?”
The boy led the old man to an extra bed. He thanked the boy and went straight to bed. The boy though stayed up long into the night pondering what he had learned today before he got to sleep.
When morning came, the boy went to check on the old man. But he wasn’t in the extra bed. The boy searched everywhere but there wasn’t a trace of the old man. But then the boy saw something on the kitchen table. It was the old man’s pipe. The boy picked it up and looked at it.
It was make out of wood and it was rather worn and old. But it seemed to add character to the pipe not cheapness.
Then the boy looked at his front door. Putting the pipe down he slowly walked toward it. When he reached the door, he stared at it for a long time. He was honestly a bit afraid to go through it. That was another thing about books. They were usually pretty safe. But what lay out there was unpredictable, uncontrollable and unknown.
But then the boy heard the old man’s voice. “Get out there and live boy.”
The boy thought of all the heroes he had read about and gained some more strength from those thoughts. Even if this wasn’t a quest, this was an adventure. And all adventurers started by walking through their front door.
So the boy opened his door.
It was a rainy day. And the clouds made the place look really gloomy. But even so the boy moved out from his doorway and walked into the rain. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt the rain on his skin. Despite the cold he smiled a bit. He continued walking until a plump red haired storekeeper woman saw him out in the rain.
“Mercy me boy, get out of the rain before you catch a cold. Dear me kids today.”
The boy followed her insider her shop. Which was a nice place. He talked to many of the people there. A bit awkwardly at times because he wasn’t much of a talker. But he liked being among people. They were interesting.
Eventually he just sat by a window and stared at the rain.
The storekeeper noticed and walked toward him.
“What be you doin dear?” she asked.
As she asked this, the clouds started to part and the sun came out. The town looked beautiful in the sun. Like a land from a fairy tale.
The boy smiled in content.
“I’m reading and writing a story actually. The story of my life.”
The boy thought back to the words of the old man who had been on one journey.
“I’m living.”