life as a journey

Looking back on the journey through life you have already made can provide fruitful indicators of the sort of routes you have been taking and the kind of transport you have been using. These may be something which, on reflection you may want to alter.

Think back over your childhood, growing up and becoming the person you are today. There may have been long, smooth patches when nothing much seemed to happen, and then there may have been times when a lot of things happened in a short space of time. There will have been major events which changed the course of your life. How do you see that the main stages of your life unfolded? What were the turning points for you? What key experiences helped you to grow and what were experienced as set-backs? What made you choose the career you are now in? Or was it perhaps serendipitous? Is it really what you want?

There are several different ways of representing your life course graphically. One way is to draw it as a line from left to right, rather like a cartoon temperature chart with peaks and troughs. You may see it as a geographical map with forked roads, bridges over obstacles, cul-de-sacs and wrong turnings. Another way is to draw a snake with each coil representing a particular place. Whatever method you choose, use a pencil first: an eraser will probably come in very useful.

Take a little time to complete this exercise. You may not be able to do it all at once. When you are reasonably satisfied with it, try and "read" it to discover points of similarity or a pattern. What does it tell you about yourself? Share your results with your partners. Talking your way through it can also provide some useful insights. What themes do you share in common? Where are you very different?

Please read a poem by C P Cavafy called Ithaka.