Some would say that life is a dance among raindrops. Despite the torrid heat we experience in the summer months, and how ostensibly we avoid stepping outdoors, the journey we call life continues unabated. The minute we think we have arrived, circumstances arise that remind us of the perennial journey.
Although our life is marked by a certain sense of routine, the toing and froing between home and work, there are events that sometimes change our course completely. Even though we lament this routine, we also seek it, and before we know it, a sense of lethargy seeps in.
As soon as Jesus gained popularity in Galilee his disciples were ready to consolidate upon the success and settle in that village. Instead, at the break of dawn, Jesus pulls them out to continue the journey, because the original mission was nomadic in nature.
When he meets Eurydice, Orpheus thinks he has found the love of his life, the one he had been waiting for. He tragically loses her when she is bitten by a venomous snake. His journey had just started, and the invitation was to start the perilous journey toward Hades to find her. Being the most talented of musicians in all the cosmos, able to move the gods’ hearts through his melodies, Orpheus still needs to search through his heart to learn a new melody that is more in tune with his new journey.
There will always be consequences for the choices we make, even the ones we keep postponing. The most passive among us also pay the consequence for their immobility at some point. Perhaps that is why we sometimes become too resistant to change, because unconsciously we know that every one of our choices will have a say in shaping the trajectory of our journey.
It is this constant movement and journeying that will save us in the end from becoming immobilised into indifference. No matter how dark the way ahead looks, the encouraging invitation is to always look ahead. Literature comes to our aid again with plenty of examples of figures who perished because they chose to look back instead of moving forward.
Lot’s wife looks back longingly on the city she was invited to escape to and is turned into a pillar of salt. Orpheus receives the ever so unique invitation to leave Hades with his wife on one condition, that of not looking back at her as he leaves. He does exactly what he is warned not to do and thus loses Eurydice forever. Even Jesus himself would proclaim that the only way is forward, for those who look back are not fit for the Kingdom of God.
Not looking back does not imply a refusal to cherish beautiful moments or taking stock of what was. It rather means a refusal to freeze the journey. Rightly so, it means dancing among the raindrops that inevitably will keep falling on our heads.
Faced with a multitude of fearsome creatures trapped in Hades and ready to devour him, Orpheus’s only way forward was to keep playing the melody that reminded him of his aim, the search for Eurydice. In the end, our journeys are not just shaped by the individual choices we make, but rather by the destinations we yearn for.