Two weeks ago, my roommate’s brother sat in my apartment eating SpaghettiO’s and asking… Two weeks ago, my roommate’s brother sat in my apartment eating SpaghettiO’s and asking about directions. He was moving to Idaho or Montana or some other place where the potatoes are abundant and the people are genuine and dull. He decided to make a pit stop in Pittsburgh along the way to say “Hi” to his brother and sleep on a futon. He didn’t have any specific interest in Idaho (or Montana), but his parents were moving there and he was living at home, so tagging along seemed the reasonable thing to do. Because he’s a reasonable person, he did just that.

Trevor brought his girlfriend of a year along with him. She also ate SpaghettiO’s. Not that it’s important to the story, but she was pretty. She wasn’t pretty in an overwhelming way, but pretty like the brunette who’s sitting on the other end of the cafeteria right now eating a turkey wrap. This particular brunette would be staying behind in Malvern (their hometown), but had come along for the drive and what seemed to be a long goodbye that neither was willing to acknowledge just yet. Her plan was to catch a flight back east when they reached his new stomping grounds.

So there it was. Trevor was 21 years old and headed out west. A Yukon, a pretty girl he might never see again and miles of open road were all that stood between him and a new life he knew nothing about. It was the premise of a movie I probably wouldn’t watch, but would secretly wish I could live after seeing the trailer. I was excited for him until we had this conversation:

“So where are you stopping along the way?” I asked.

“What?” he said.

“Where are you going to stop along the way? Like Mount Rushmore, a night or two in Chicago?”

“We’re headed right there.”

“Oh. You mean you’re not stopping anywhere?”

“Well, we have to stop at two hotels on the way, but that’s about it.”

“Oh.”

Brief and awkward pause.

“Is it cool if I have some more SpaghettiO’s?”

“Sure,” I responded..

Trevor had the romantic opportunity of a lifetime lying in front of him and was passing on it to make a beeline to one of the states whose capital everybody forgets on their third grade geography test. I understand there’s no shortage of reasons why he might have been doing this, but I still couldn’t shake the desire to shake him and say, “Open your eyes and look around. This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.”

It had the potential to be the week of his life. A mind-blowing, life-altering and utterly transcendent experience. They’d spend a night tearing it up in Chicago and then a night in a sleeping bag in the back of the Yukon studying the stars and wondering if you get towed for parking overnight at a national park. They’d eat Dinty Moore out of the can one night and prime rib the next. The week would be everything at once.

He was headed right to Utah, though.

I think a lot of us are.

The older I get, the more people I meet who are in a hurry for reasons they find easier to explain than understand. We flip a coin, pick a direction, pop on a veneer of certainty and start running as fast as we can because the point isn’t where we’re going, but that we’re going somewhere