An inner journey is a journey of the mind and spirit. It happened when a person experiences an event or relationship that makes them reflect on their own development and growth. It alters perceptions and opens up new understandings and insights on the world around us. It can be initiated by the person, or the journey begins because of circumstances out of their control. The most important thing to remember, is an inner journey results in change and self reflection of some sort.
STARTER:
Read the following statements on what an inner journey is:
Use this to create your own quotes on the Wall Wisher mind map:
TASK:
Read the following excerpt from Lance Armstrong, It’s Not About the Bike, my journey back to life. Answer the questions in the comment box below.
- WHAT is the text about?
- HOW are techniques used to create meaning?
My illness was humbling and starkly revealing, and it forced me to survey my life with an unforgiving eye. There are some shameful episodes in it: instances of meanness, unfinished tasks, weakness, and regrets. I had to ask myself, “If I live, who is it that I intend to be?” I found that I had a lot of growing to do as a man.
I won’t kid you. There are two Lance Armstrongs, pre-cancer, and post. Everybody’s favorite question is “How did cancer change you?” The real question is how didn’t it change me? I left my house on October 2, 1996, as one person and came home another. I was a world-class athlete with a mansion on a riverbank, keys to a Porsche, and a self-made fortune in the bank. I was one of the top riders in the world and my career was moving along a perfect arc of success. I returned a different person, literally. In a way, the old me did die, and I was given a second life. Even my body is different, because during the chemotherapy I lost all the muscle I had ever built up, and when I recovered, it didn’t come back in the same way.
The truth is that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know why I got the illness, but it did wonders for me, and I wouldn’t want to walk away from it. Why would I want to change, even for a day, the most important and shaping event in my life?
People die. That truth is so disheartening that at times I can’t bear to articulate it. Why should we go on, you might ask? Why don’t we all just stop and lie down where we are? But there is another truth, too. People live. It’s an equal and opposing truth. People live, and in the most remarkable ways. When I was sick, I saw more beauty and triumph and truth in a single day than I ever did in a bike race — but they were human moments, not miraculous ones. I met a guy in a fraying sweatsuit who turned out to be a brilliant surgeon. I became friends with a harassed and overscheduled nurse named LaTrice, who gave me such care that it could only be the result of the deepest sympathetic affinity. I saw children with no eyelashes or eyebrows, their hair burned away by chemo, who fought with the hearts of Indurains.
I still don’t completely understand it.
All I can do is tell you what happened.
Suggestions to get you going:
- The illness is the catalyst for the journey into a new life
- Use of flashbacks to analyse the previous aspects of his life (self reflection)
- His response to the illness became a journey
- He ‘left his house’ gives a sense of the trip
- Images of the journey as life
- Rhetorical questions try to involve the responder in the moment.
RESOURCES:
Vocab Extension – expand your vocabulary when taking about the journey
TERMS FOR HSC – Language and Visual Techniques
This page has the following sub pages.
