The Long Journey

Explore all episodes and download from the full library: https://eattmag.com/free-podcasts-download/ Pablo could not remember every detail of the story. But he remembered the important part. A very famous man travelled to a tiny island, far away, near the bottom of the world. The man had become very important. Very important. In fact, he would eventually become the king of one of the greatest kingdoms on Earth. He could have spent his time anywhere. He could have met presidents, politicians, business leaders and other famous people. But instead, he travelled all that way to visit the family of an old friend. The friend had died many years earlier. About ten years earlier, Pablo thought, from what he remembered of the story. But the famous man had not forgotten his old friend. He travelled to the island to meet his friend's family. He spoke with them. He sat with them. He listened to their stories and shared bread and wine with them. Perhaps they laughed about things the old friend used to do. Perhaps they remembered the way he spoke. They remembered a journey they had taken together, a meal they had shared, or a joke that nobody else understood. Pablo imagined the famous man sitting with the family. For a little while, he was not a king or a great public figure. He was simply an old friend who had come a very long way. Pablo looked down at the bowl in his hands. What was the value of a friendship like that? The friend was no longer alive, but the friendship had not completely disappeared. It was still there in a journey. It was there in the stories. It was there in the decision to travel across the world to sit with his family. Perhaps that was one way to understand value. You could look at how somebody spent their money. But you could also look at how somebody spent their time. Where did they go? Who did they remember? What promises did they keep? What were they still willing to do, even many years later? Pablo stopped walking. He looked back at the long line of his footsteps in the sand. Then he looked ahead. The beach continued out into the distance. He began wondering about the value of his own time. Where had it gone? What had he done with it? And what might he do with the time that he still had ahead of him?