Melissa Modolo "pilgrimage"

"Pilgrimage" is an interesting concept because when people speak of pilgrims, they normally are referring to people travelling to reach a certain destination. It has been true throughout this class that when we speak of a pilgrimage, we are talking about a journey with a destination, but the important part of the pilgrimage is not all in the destination itself. If people wanted to see the end point, they could travel quickly by car or plane to get there and see it. They could look up pictures online and see the places they wish to see. But a pilgrimage is not about getting to one endpoint immediately. The purpose of a pilgrimage is not the light at the end of the tunnel. For some people the destination is the sole motivation for the rest of the trip, but even for these people, the journey is the real pilgrimage. Without the journey, the destination is merely a place with no meaning. It may have a meaning in history or in other ways, but it has no personal meaning to the person arriving there; unless, of course, they have journeyed to reach it. When a place becomes a goal to reach, the person who reaches it feels many emotions upon their arrival. A journey gives the pilgrim time to contemplate the place and to imagine what they will see. Their arrival to the place is a personal accomplishment. It is an achievement which they have worked to reach and suddenly both place and the journey itself have immense meaning. And so in this way even the pilgrims who came to America would not have been pilgrims if they had not had to survive a treacherous boat ride across the Atlantic. They would merely have been colonists, or people displaced into a new land. But the journey itself, the adventure, is what made them pilgrims, just as all true pilgrims of today must travel and take risks to reach their destination.