Milestone...

Some people talk about going the extra mile or reaching a milestone in their lives, well, I’m not sure about either. Sometimes that extra mile seems a lot longer than a single mile and that life-milestone can seem like a life-millstone.

Milestones have been around since Roman times. They were placed to provide points of reference for that weary traveler traveling along that lonely road. The stones were placed there to reassure them that the right and proper path was being followed, and to indicate either the distance they had traveled or the remaining distance left to travel to reach their destination – heart’s ease.

Sometimes, as I've said before, we walk around with our eyes almost closed - here's another example of what I mean. The milestone in the picture is just up the road from the Birmingham office of the company I work for. It’s a very busy road, office blocks, hotels, lots of traffic, not quite the place to find an old milestone. I must have walked past it dozens of times before eventually noticing it very recently. Who knows what surrounded it when it was first placed there - fields, a village, a herd of cows? Maybe it stood on a country road like the slate milestone just outside of Bangor, North Wales, pictured below. Not my picture I'm afraid, I'm still looking for this - I'll blunder into it one day, probably breaking an arm or leg in the process.

When the Hagley Road milestone was erected Birmingham was a whole mile away, and a mile was a distance.

Wouldn’t it be comfortable to have the reassurance of milestones in our lives? Some markers along the way indicating that we are doing the right thing by following a particular road; something to confirm that we are on track and will reach our destination, wouldn’t it be calming to know how far we have to travel before we get there, be sure where there is – to know we only have to go only that extra mile along the road to find our heart's ease.

We all reach milestones in our lives I guess, but I for one have never been sure that I’ve reached the right one, nor how far along the journey I am, or when or where my journey will finish.

Perhaps that’s how it should be.