The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Some people spend their entire life trying to escape from where they are, while others spend their whole life trying to return to something they lost. I recently read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, and wanted to recommend the book here.

The novel follows four young people traveling across America after difficult personal histories, each carrying different dreams, wounds, and ideas about freedom.

There is Emmett, an eighteen year old recently released from a juvenile center, reunited with his eight year old brother Billy after their father’s death and their mother’s disappearance years earlier, they are moving from Nebraska to California. Then there is Duchess and Woolly, who escape from the same juvenile center and unexpectedly join the journey. Together they crisscross through 1950s America, and through their misadventures we are presented with fascinating portrayals of loneliness, hope, friendship, memory, and the search for meaning.

Two thoughts from the novel that connects with life is worth exploring.

The first is that freedom without direction can become another kind of prison. When I look around today, I often see this in the way we live our lives. The constant pressure to reinvent ourselves. Career hopping without reflection. The social media culture that compares people against one another’s carefully manufactured realities. The exhausting restlessness of always running after the next goal. Somewhere along the way, the freedom we choose starts looking more like chains we willingly carry.

Sometimes we convince ourselves that the next city, the next job, the next relationship, or the next version of ourselves will finally fix everything. But if we continue carrying the same confusion within us, the road simply becomes longer. Movement alone does not create meaning.

The second thought was that more than the journey itself, the people we travel with shape who we become. Friends, colleagues, mentors, family, different work cultures, emotional baggage, kindness, insecurities, ambitions, fears all of it influences us. The people around us shape our thinking, our confidence, our choices, and even the stories we tell ourselves about life.

I do not mean to say we have no responsibility for what we become. But everything is not entirely our own making either. As we adapt to people and environments, we also transform. Sometimes into versions of ourselves we are proud of, and sometimes into people we barely recognize.

Maybe life is not only about choosing destinations, it is also about understanding our fellow travelers. And even when we cannot choose them, knowing who they are may help us understand ourselves better than the journey itself.

Interesting book.. off to the next one.