A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to

The great American writer John Steinbeck, who chronicled the dust, sweat, and dreams of ordinary lives, once declared: “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” These words, though simple, are profound, for they strike at the very heart of human experience. Both journeys and marriages are not mere straight paths to a destination, but living things, filled with surprise, trial, and transformation. To imagine that one can command them like a soldier commands his ranks is to invite disappointment. Instead, they must be entered with humility, patience, and openness to what the road—or the union—will bring.

The journey is one of life’s oldest metaphors. To set out upon a road is to embrace the unknown: the weather may change, the map may fail, companions may falter, and dangers may appear where one least expects them. Yet it is precisely this uncertainty that makes a journey transformative. Likewise, in marriage, one may enter with plans, expectations, and hopes, but life will not conform to them. Trials of sickness, burdens of labor, shifts of the heart—all these arrive unbidden. To cling too tightly to control is to break under the weight of disappointment. To flourish is to yield, to adapt, and to trust.

Steinbeck himself was no stranger to either. He traveled widely, and in his book Travels with Charley, he confessed that no matter how carefully he planned his wanderings, the road always had its own will. The journey unfolded not according to his control, but according to the rhythm of chance encounters, broken-down vehicles, and sudden revelations. In the same way, his own marriages bore the marks of both beauty and turbulence. He knew, from bitter and sweet experience alike, that both road and marriage demand surrender more than mastery.

History too offers witness. Think of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. He set out thinking he controlled his course, that he knew the road to Asia across the western seas. Instead, storms, miscalculations, and the vast unknown carried him to a land he had not intended. His failure of control birthed discovery, for better and for worse. Marriage is much the same: one may set out expecting a certain life, a certain ease, but the unexpected always arrives. Those who survive it are not those who force control, but those who adapt, endure, and transform.

The deeper truth of Steinbeck’s wisdom is this: control is an illusion. Whether in journeys or in marriages, life resists domination. Those who try to bend it entirely to their will soon find themselves weary, angry, or broken. But those who accept the mystery, who embrace the surprises and yield to the current, find not only endurance but joy. To walk the road or to share a life with another is to practice humility, for both will teach lessons that no map, no plan, and no command could ever provide.

The lesson for us is clear: do not enter into journeys or marriages with the arrogance of mastery. Instead, prepare your heart for surrender. Be ready to meet difficulties with patience, and changes with grace. Do not resist every turn in the path, but learn from it. Do not demand that your partner conform to your vision alone, but grow with them into something neither of you could have foreseen. For it is in the yielding, not in the commanding, that the road and the union reveal their greatest treasures.

Practical wisdom flows from this: plan, yes, but do not cling to plans. Love, yes, but do not bind love with chains of control. When the unexpected arrives—whether in travel or in life together—welcome it as a teacher rather than curse it as an enemy. Speak with patience, act with humility, and be willing to be changed. In this way, both the road and the marriage become not prisons of control, but adventures of growth.

Thus, let the words of John Steinbeck endure: “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” For life, in its deepest truths, is never mastered by force, but embraced by surrender. And those who yield with grace discover in both the journey and the marriage a beauty far greater than the one they had planned.