Going Places

It's summer, and many of you probably have been on the move (or will be) for vacations to beaches or mountains, museums or ballgames.  I've been thinking a lot about moving and going lately.

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"Let's go."

Most of you have heard those words hundreds of times and said them hundreds more without ever thinking much about them. 

There's more here than meets the eye — or the ear.

The grammar is surprisingly complex, so we will skip that part — you're welcome — and focus on the word "go," which packs a lot of meaning all by itself.

The word go is one of about 4,500 Modern English words that can be traced all the way back to Old English.  Indeed, our friend King Alfred (whom you probably recall if you read my column a few weeks ago) used an Old English form of go when he translated Gregory's Pastoral Care:

Nals na sua sua healt monn oððe untrum, hwilum hie gað, hwilum hie restað (quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary).

Here, "gað" is the third-person, plural, present-tense form of the Old English word for go.  (That old symbol at the end of the word is called an "eth," and it represents sounds we now spell with th. 

The longevity of the word go is only part of what makes it interesting, though.  What really interests me about it is its meaning, along with the power and resonance of this meaning for all of us.  In fact, I suspect the power and resonance of go help to explain its longevity.

Thinking about Going

Consciously or unconsciously, virtually all of us talk and think a lot about going, either literally going (to the store or to college) or figuratively going ("to the top" or just "going places").  When we read Dr. Seuss's book Oh, the Places You'll Go! to our children (or just to ourselves), we understand that he is referring to more than just literally traveling from one geographical spot to another.

I emphasize the word "think" here because this is where the interest lies for me.  Why is the act of going so pervasive in our thought?

I think it's because humans see movement as a central — maybe even the most central — aspect of our existence.  Learning to crawl and learning to walk are two of the most momentous events in our early lives because they allow us to go places.  For the rest of our lives, we go countless places, some mundane and some exotic, and the act of going to those places, especially the exotic ones, takes up a lot of our attention and drives much of our emotional lives.  Just think of all the conversations you have had with friends about your vacations: where you went, what you saw and did.

Novelty places an important role here, I think.  Just as humans are wired to go, we also are wired to seek and appreciate new things.  (Indeed, maybe the latter explains the former: we want to experience novelty, so we need to leave our present position to do that.)

Going as Progress

With all of this literal going in mind, we can appreciate our similar preoccupation with figurative going.  Going somewhere feels like progress, so we speak of "going places" when we are thinking of progress in our careers and lives.

These notions of novelty and progress bring us back to that sentence at the beginning of this essay: "Let's go."  It often is used as an invitation to go, literally, to a place, as in "Let's go to the beach," meaning something like "I want you to go to the beach with me."  In other cases, however, it is more like a directive, a form of encouragement, or even an admonition.  It might even come with a question: "What are we waiting for?  Let's go!"  In these cases, "go" often refers not to moving to a location, but moving to get something done.  (As a chancellor, I often think this way even if I don't always use the words.  My colleagues at IU Kokomo know that I like to try new things, make progress, and create new opportunities for our students and our community. "Let's go" is practically a slogan for me.)

Going in the Arts

In light of all of the meaning we attach to going, it should come as no surprise that journeys, roads, and references to going are extremely common in the artistic realm.  Some of our greatest literary works, including The Odyssey and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, involve epic journeys, and many others, such as Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Walt Whitman's "Facing West from California's Shores," use the notion of going to reflect on personal experience and national or even universal progress.  T. S. Eliot actually uses a slight variation of the sentence I used to start this essay — on three occasions, in fact — in the opening lines of his famous poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.

Here, "Let us go" sounds more like an invitation than an admonition.  In any case, the speaker is clearly speaking of a journey — a modest and rather depressing one, it seems to me.  Like other parts of the poem, these lines read like a mock heroic take on the epic journey.  Prufrock does not imagine — perhaps cannot imagine — an odyssey across the Mediterranean Sea or a noble escape on the Mississippi River; rather, he is inviting someone to join him on a much more modest journey "through certain half-deserted streets," where one is likely to find "one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells."

Still, the notion of going was clearly on Eliot's mind.

Going on My Mind

It's been on my mind quite a bit lately, too.

Last week, I had the great pleasure of visiting with some of IU Kokomo's student sculptors and their faculty mentor and of seeing an inspiring work they crafted for our campus.  It features an abstract representation of a door, as well as steps.  The team explained to me that the work reflects the experience of going to college and experiencing personal transformation.  In short, it captures the notion of going places in the figurative sense.  (We are planning an event to celebrate the installation of the sculpture on September 3.  If you happen to live near Kokomo or enjoy a bit of travel — you know, going places — I invite you to join us!)

Left to right: Nick Biscella, Chancellor Mark Canada, Professor Gregory Steel, Sierra Pixley, and Alyssa Stevens collaborated with IUK alum Cybil Johnson (not shown) on Passage to the Possible, which will be installed on the IU Kokomo campus for permanent display.

The act of going is also central to a new feature of Mind Inclined.  Today, we are launching a series of virtual tours called Moving Experiences, each designed to help you experience some interesting or even inspiring part of the world, either by traveling there yourself and using our video tour as a guide or by experiencing the place vicariously by watching our video on, say, the treadmill or stationary bike.  The first installment, appropriately, is a tour of a portion of the Appian Way, the great Roman road built more than 2000 years ago.  In the video, I head out on "the open road" (to borrow a phrase from Whitman), discuss the fascinating history of the Appian Way, and offer some additional thoughts about roads and travel.

Finally, a road trip is at the center of a novel I'm writing for publication here on Mind Inclined.  This mystery/thriller is the story of a recent college grad who hits the road to see America, but sees too much and winds up in a harrowing adventure, which he records on his cell phone.  It will be available for free here at Mind Inclined.  I hope you will give it a go.

Where and Why Are You Going?

No matter who or where you are, you probably will go somewhere today (and tomorrow and the next day).  In fact, if you are listening to the podcast form of this column, you are may be going somewhere right now, perhaps on your bike or on foot.  I hope that these thoughts about going will help you reflect on the journey, perhaps even on your aspirations for it, and enrich the entire experience.  Why are you going where you are going?  How will you get there — and how else could you have gotten there?  Is "there" even where you should be going?

Perhaps, the next time you hear or say, "Let's go," you will think a bit about the journey — what it means and what it could mean.