Book 106 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title – Don't Start Your Quest Until You Have Your Compass!

Book – On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Book Description: On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac. Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.

Reflection:

A couple of months ago, I picked up a book called Big Sur by the author Jack Kerouac. Refer back to the reflection for that Big Sur on Book 67 of this Year of Magical Learning. As I mentioned in that reflection, I picked it up because I’ve always heard the name of the famous author, Jack Kerouac, but I really had no idea who he was or what his work was all about. I tried any random book of his to see what I could learn.

After I finished Big Sur, I was honestly very sad for the guy. I thought to myself, “what the hell made this guy so famous”? The book wasn’t very good at all and it didn’t make sense. In Big Sur, it sounded like his life was miserable, he was scared, lost, tired, and searching for anyway out of the mess of a life he had created in his early 40’s. The reflection I wrote was about what happens when your quest never finds a purpose and you end up on a never ending hamster wheel that you can’t get off.

Upon completion of Big Sur, and left with a bunch of questions about the guy, I started to research this Kerouac’s life a little more and the whole Beat Generation movement he helped start. At the time he wrote Big Sur, he was in his early 40’s, very famous / infamous, and was on his path to slowly killing himself of alcoholism that would claim his life only a few years later after this book was written. I wanted to know how he got to this point. I kept reading and found that his second book, On the Road, was considered his masterpiece and a book he wrote while in his mid-20’s that was the catalyst that kicked off the whole Beat Movement. I felt I had to give him one more shot to really wow me and show me what all the hype was about that surrounds his life.

After reading On the Road, I think I finally understand what was so appealing about Jack’s writing. A bunch of young 20 something’s full of energy that set out to explore the world, question life, find meaning, and challenge the status quo. It was exciting, adventurous, and you didn’t know what was coming next. I could see how this would appeal to someone that was looking for inspiration and courage to start their own adventure in life. Just grab your friends, go explore the world, and come what may.

On the Road is the quintessential story of how all epic quests begin. You must have courage to challenge yourself and the world around you, you must be willing to step outside of your comfort zone, and you must be open and adaptable to whatever comes your way. Any dramatic change in life always must begin with these fundamentals at the beginning of your quest.

However, questing is a double edge sword. You either find what you were looking for or you end up more lost than you were when you began. That is what happened to our friend Jack Kerouac by the time that he got to Big Sur. He had been stuck in this never-ending search for purpose and meaning that turned up no results. 15+ years later, he was still doing the same things as he was at the start of his quest and now it was no longer fun. Now it was miserable, and he was on a path to self-destruction.

So what lessons can we learn from our friend Jack Kerouac? Where did he go wrong? My theory is that Jack forget the most important part of any quest...his compass. My biggest lesson I learned and can share with the followers of my own quest is to never start your journey until you’ve defined your core values to serve as your compass. You may not know where you are going, and that is fine. At some point you will find yourself more lost than you began, but that is the point of the quest in the first place. The truth is, no one knows where they are going...until they do. Until that time comes and you find your purpose, let your core values to be your guide and lean on them when you feel lost. If you do, I’m 100% sure you will like where you end up.

Question: What are the core values you use to illuminate your path?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - On the Road

YOML Bookstore - On the Road by Jack Kerouac