Journeys are typically linear. They are a means of getting from one point to another. Some journeys are not about getting from one place to another but about the experience itself. A trans-Atlantic voyage for example, is linear; a Caribbean cruise may well be circular. A cruise, unlike a voyage, is an end in itself.
Journeys bring about change. A voyage changes your location. A cruise may change your mind-space. You may land up at the same geographical point from which you departed, but your experience will have been different and you will probably be in a different mind-space from when you departed.
Often in life we take journeys of change. Sometimes they are exotic vacations. Sometimes we go away on a course or to study in Yeshiva for a period. Sometimes we take a Sabbatical. Perhaps we go to a health spa. There are times when we don’t choose our own journeys. Sometimes they are journeys through hard times, pain, illness or loss. They all entail arriving at a place of different being from where we were before the journey.
The journey of Benei Yisrael through the desert was designed to take them from Mitzrayim to Israel. It was however also designed to change their mental and spiritual state. In telling us about this journey the Torah teaches us something so fundamental about journeying. We learn in Shemot 13:18 Vayaseiv elokim et ha’am derech hamidbar, Yam Suf (“And Hashem took them on a circuitous journey through the desert by the Red Sea”). In the previous verse the Torah tells us the reason G-d opted for the circuitous journey rather than the linear one: “Lest the people have remorse when they experience struggle [1] and return to Egypt”.
A successful spiritual or emotional journey is not only about change. It is also about the permanence of change and its sustainability. Too often we return from a journey full of new resolutions and affirmations only to lose them in day-to-day routine a short while later. A journey should be so life-changing that we actually cannot find our way back to our initial comfort zone any more. A journey should forever change the way we think and experience the world. The change should be authentic and not artificial. This type of sustainable change does not result from events no matter how dramatic those events are. Sustainable change results from consistent process. The journey of the Benei Yisrael in the desert was not an event; it was a process. This is why it is recorded for us in such detail, so that we can understand that process and revisit it and use it ourselves.
The Peasch Seder too is not an event but a process. The Midrash[2]says that the law of reclining at the Seder originates from this verse. The word Vayaseiv (“And He took them on a circuitous journey”) has the same root as the word Haseibah (“reclining”[3]). Reclining at a meal indicates that the meal is an end in itself and not just a means of “grabbing something to eat”. McDonalds does not offer couches to sit on. Starbucks does. McDonalds sells food and time saving. Starbucks sells process. (That is why McDonalds has to compete on price and Starbucks can charge a premium.) The Seder is a process, not a meal.
Although Peasach comes and goes, we should not be the same after a Seder as we were at its beginning, nor should we ever again revert to where we were before that Seder. Each year we are at the same point in the calendar, but we should be there on a higher level than the year before so that our lives forever spiral upwards.
Life is a journey too. It also is designed to change us, and to change us every day, permanently, sustainably and forever. Our lives are circuitous journeys through time and space. We travel through a complex labyrinth of pathways that make it hard for us to revert to places we were at years ago. Still, there is always the chance that our habits neurological pathways keep taking us backwards to old patterns, to our own Mitzrayims. If we do go back to our old ways we simply have to continue with the learnings. If our lives end without the lessons of life having been learnt we have to come back here again and again. Travel this journey in a reclining posture. Savor each moment, each lesson whether the lessons entail the rich flavors of salt-water and haroshet dips, or the bitter lessons of marror. Treat life as a journey that is an end in itself, a spiritual university and not just a transition between pre-life and post-life. Move forward. Never look backward. And even when you experience struggle, never think about returning to your Mitzrayim!
[2] Shemot Rabbah 20:18. See also Ba’al HaTurim Shemot 13:18
[3] Pesachim 99b
