Journey in Literature: A Path Toward Self-Discovery

Journeys. After reading this word, what do you see? What image popped into your brain? Maybe undiscovered paths, or the road less traveled. Or maybe just the monotonous highways or crowded streets. How about a clear blue sky? 

When I signed up for this course, “Journey in Literature”, since the first day of class, I have been able to develop my own definition of the word “journeys”. Just like the basic definition provided by Google, I thought a journey was simply: “an act of moving from one place to another”. Kind of like a car journey or a summer vacation. But, through class discussion, we were able to uncover its deeper meaning: “a long and often difficult process of personal change and development”. What I didn’t know was that I was the one who would have to uncover the most profound journey: my own. 

As a first analysis of personal discovery, we had to design a cover for our Journey Journals, one side was external journeys and the other side was internal journeys. So, naturally, for my external journeys, I looked for pictures of the places I’ve traveled to: my family’s first and only vacation (to Walt Disney World), my Senior Trip on a cruise with my high school friends, and my trip to Chicago representing the University of Puerto Rico. Then, for my internal journeys, I started looking for inspirational quotes that spoke the most to my truth, as in my aspirations and values. My mind started to travel to my passions, goals and dreams; I wrote them down, and chose the best quotes that synthesized my ideas. Already, without realizing, I had done the first step of my self-discovery journey: reminisced on the past, reflected on the present and felt inspired for the future. 

Even more, the most profound step toward this intimate, personal journey has been writing. Writing on my journal whatever I had in my mind, and “going for the jugular” as my professor Dr. Pittmann would suggest, in order to really be free with our thoughts and feelings, without thinking about making it look pretty or the words to make sense or perfect grammar. In this way, I could see how we try to make our thoughts organized all the time and how we should practice letting our ideas flow freely to then be able to get a sense about what we want to say. This made me remember the rush I felt when I used to write in high school, as it was one of my favorite things to do. That thrilling, euphoric feeling of writing was inculcated in me once again, which has been an important step in my personal journey. 

            Besides writing in our journals, we learned about journeys, external and internal, through different readings and writing reflections about them. In my essays, I further developed this personal journey. I’ve written about my identity as a puertorrican (which ended up winning second place in the University’s Literary Contest), the touchy subject of tourism in an oppressed country, the big impact music has made in my life, how we should pay more attention to being present in our daily lives, among others. 

            Throughout these journeys, whether that’s traveling to a physical place, a state of mind, or like this reflection on my journey to personal discovery, I learned that journeys are what develop us to be holistic human beings. I hope you continue to enjoy reading my journey through my wandering mind.