Journey

It’s a fine thing to consider that words that seem to mean exactly the same thing do not really do so, because the shades are different, or one is more formal than another, or one can be used in some cases but not in others, or they bring quite different human worlds into play. Our word today, JOURNEY, is more than a TRIP. You can take a TRIP to Mexico by getting on an airplane and landing in Cancun. But if you JOURNEY to Mexico, you may take a longer while to get there, and when you do arrive, your JOURNEY is not ended, not at all. In some ways it is just beginning, as you try to speak Spanish to the first person you meet, or you smell the dinner in the air in a small village in the mountains, and it is like nothing you have known before. In English, a JOURNEY implies a going-forth of the mind and heart and soul. You don’t go on a JOURNEY to the drive-through fast-food joint.

Something of the original sense of the French word JOURNEE survives in English: it meant the …