How do you know you travel if you never turn to see
The signposts and the milestones of each day?
What’s the point of any journey if it doesn’t make you free,
Free to choose your path, or free to turn away?
There’s a map in every memory
You only have to look,
Learn to read the key you’re offered by your soul;
Pick your route and destination,
Pack your heart and hitch a ride,
It’s the only way you’re sure to reach your goal.
You may ask “Where am I going?”
Never ask “Where have I been?”
In case you look too far and wish you’d stayed.
You may fear each new encounter,
But step by step we learn
That to conquor fear we must know we’re afraid.
If you stay so scared of living
How can you claim to be alive?
If you never start the journey,
Then you never will arrive.
Sometimes you gain companions and the travelling is light,
Until the time you know you’ll have to part.
Sometimes the road is narrow and you need to walk alone,
So each step becomes a weight within your heart.
But still the journey matters
Without it we are lost
And wander without sense of self regard.
To know your true direction
And the goal you have in mind
Makes the price you pay seem not so very hard.
You may ask “Where am I going?”
Never ask “Where have I been?”
In case you look too far and wish you’d stayed.
You may fear each new encounter,
But step by step we learn
That to conquer fear we must know we’re afraid.
If you stay so scared of living
How can you claim to be alive?
If you never start the journey,
Then you never will arrive.
If you never start the journey, then you never will arrive.
‘From the Album – The Road to Herculaneum, Recorded by The Immortals.
Words and music by A. Morgan Arrangement by C. Hartley.
Issued on the Olympus label’