The Journey

True journey stories for me have always been The Wizard of Oz, Odysseus, Star Wars, and It's a Wonderful Life. The hero in each of these stories is usually immersed in feelings of hopelessness that are always initiated by a crisis. Dorothy suffers the loss of friends, family and home, and is ultimately exiled. Odysseus also loses friends, family and home, as do Luke and George Bailey. My crisis centered around the loss of my friends, family and home in Syria. Through past years, two of my best friends have passed away, and my oldest brother and sister abandoned my family. Now, in syria, my family is being murdered. With the border closed, there is not much I can do to go there and help. Life as I knew it started to crumble. I read books, went to groups, gurus and therapists/ counselors. In doing this, I came to realize that somehow only I had the answer to life that I'd been looking for. No one else had it for me. I hoped I would find the answers I had sought for so long in how I chose to live my Journey through this crisis. As I looked back on the years of my life, I remembered that even then I was searching for "an answer." The world around me was full of misery and suffering, and it wasn't reserved for only the "bad" people. Good people were murdered, suffered the loss of loved ones, sickness and disease. No one was immune to the reality of suffering. Even Jesus was tortured on the cross, and rumor is, Buddha died of food poisoning. I had accumulated years of troubles— bad relationships, jealousy, addictions, pain and arrogance. You know, the usual stuff. In my mind everyone else was the cause and source of my suffering. I accepted I had my problems, but if only everyone else out there would change I would be so much happier. Yet deep inside I knew that wasn't entirely true. As I was thrown into this crisis, it became the beginning of a Journey that, as it unfolded, answered my questions, "Why is there so much suffering, what is the cause, is there a