On the road to Mongolia, I’m having troubles telling my lights apart.

My friends and I are taking part in a rally that takes us from London to Mongolia and back. While Mongolia is the final destination, getting to Mongolia is not the purpose of the trip. In fact, Mongolia itself is rather besides the point. We are all seeking something on this trip; be it travel, desire for challenge, or hope of freedom. 

As I’m writing this, countries pass by the window with the frequency of a roadside McDonald's. The day began in Czech Republic, all of 2 hours were spent in Slovakia, and Hungary’s capital, Budapest, is 80 miles up the road. 

Back home, when I need some space to think I take a train to Brighton. Two hours staring out of the train window and two hours on the beach is about all the time I need to reflect. Road to Mongolia offers quite a lot of window time and speeding through the forest, the only thing I can really make out is the light among the branches.

There is a dictum in western culture that instructs one to follow the light. Follow the light it says, the light at the end of the tunnel. For it is the clearing above the tree branches. The path to light is the path of pain and struggle. Newborns know as much and cry at the first sight of light. Unlike light, darkness does not hurt but we shun it for it’s tempting comforts.

It’s a noble pursuit, but what I think is missing from the light dictum is the acknowledgement that there is a multitude of lights. Choosing between them is not at all trivial. Follow the wrong one for too long and it will blind you. Follow it for wrong reasons and you won’t find your way through the branches. Tangled and blinded, you will return to darkness. It is what Edna St. Vincent Millay referred to as ‘eye’s bright trouble’.

At any one time, I remember precisely two jokes. The second is about a moth who walks into a podiatrist’s office. You’ve heard it told before by better people so I shan’t retell it here. The butt of the joke is that moth’s are stupid. The other butt of the joke is that sometimes there isn’t any reason why moths do things; sometimes moths just follow the light.

It is true to say that the last 2 years were kind, and exposed me to opportunities I could not dream of. It is also true to say that the reason I could not imagine them is because nothing that happened in the last 2 years was part of the de facto 5-year plan. 

Did the light take me where I wanted to go? Absolutely not.

Did the light take me where I needed to go? Also debatable.

I’m here to put some distance between self and what became of it. To find a new light, and, perhaps, even the reason to follow it. For we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night...and all that.