For some reason, this short excerpt from a book that i read on the plane flying back to NY from singapore seems to have stuck with me and touched me - i find it so beautiful, and almost a little romantic in its simplicity. It is an exchange between a son and his father -- it goes,

"Will you remember this day, Gogol?" his father had asked, turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head.

"How long do I have to remember it?"

Over the rise and fall of the wind, he could hear his father's laughter...

"Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back to the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

In my life, I have many romantic notions & whimsical thoughts, and one of them has always been to go "to a place where there was nowhere left to go". It is a life that encompasses many physical and mental challenges, but ultimately reaching a pinnacle and reveling in the glory of "making it".

Ironically, I don't use this image for much of my professional life (scarily, i'm quite unambitious), or even being competitive physically (forget running marathons), but in terms of traveling with someone -- namely, God. and hopefully if He wills it, a significant other. To walk the roads less traveled, to scale to greater heights, to reach the ends of the earth -- only to emerge victorious... but still holding on to each other, standing together.