It took me some years to believe that the longest roads sometimes lead nowhere and it is something an MIT or Harvard professor will never teach in class. They just end and sometimes, in extreme pain, leaving tears in our eyes. Even if most of these journeys are walked with loved ones, they still remain the loneliest journeys.
On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines flight took off from Kuala Lumpur heading all the way to Beijing, China, with over 200 passengers on board. It was a normal flight, like many others before it and no one on that plane had any reason to believe that something was about to happen which would change their lives forever but it later turned out to be the only plane that never landed. It just disappeared, leaving behind one of the biggest searches in aviation history, a search for a plane that was never recovered.
To this day, the families of the victims are still waiting for answers. Every passing day carries the same hope they have carried for years, the hope that the bodies of their loved ones will one day be found.
They wait for something that explains what happened. But it has been over a decade now, and if there is a certain time frame in which humans are expected to lose hope, five years would be enough. At some point, the world tells you to give up or move on with your life, even when your heart refuses to do so. But sometimes, it is okay to just give up. No need pretending to be strong or be hopeful for over ten years. Just let some things go and allow life to continue.
But this is where the story becomes even more painful. For the more than 200 people on board, none of them ever imagined that the flight they were taking would be their very last. None of them thought that this journey would also be the end of their lives. They never reached China, but they also never made it back to Malaysia. Their journey ended somewhere unknown, suspended between departure and arrival.
They got lost on their way home. For anyone who has ever embarked on any kind of journey, this truth is not new. The chances of zero return are always present. It is not something new to get lost, or to travel on the wrong side of the road, only to discover that it leads nowhere.
Every journey carries existence risk, and every movement forward sometimes leads nowhere or to your sad end . It requires a high degree of luck just to arrive, or even to return safely from an adventure.
According to the Global Displacement Forecast Report (2025), global forced migration could surpass 140 million people by 2030. This includes refugees, internally displaced people and others who are forced from their homes and pushed to live in countries other than the countries of their origin, each with a story, a destination in mind and a reason for leaving.
This projection is based on trend analysis of conflict, violence, systemic corruption and socioeconomic instability. These forces drive people away from their homes and push them toward faraway lands in search of safety and better opportunities. Leaving home is not an easy a choice. It is painful decision made out of fear and desperation, when all seems lost. Don’t blame people much they leave home because sometimes, it is the last choice after trying everything humanly possible.
But the reality behind these adventures is even sadder. Not all of these more than 140 million people will find safety or human dignity on their way to an imagined promised land. Many of these journeys require crossing dangerous seas and sometimes lonely roads with 99 percent possibilities of fatal accidentals. In the process, there will be the lucky ones, those who cross successfully. But there will also be those who do not make it. For these unlucky ones, their journeys end in the middle of the road, leaving behind a cloud of pain hanging over their families.
Even for those who make it to the other side, the story does not always change. Many never find the safety they were searching for. And for those who do, they eventually realize that the grass is never greener in the way they had imagined it would be.
The truth is that all human adventures, including the search for safety and better opportunity, are connected to our need to be happy. We believe that once we reach a certain destination, or once we find safety, happiness will finally arrive. But it is painful to accept that the world does not give happiness freely. Sometimes, it comes at a cost.
There is no easy way home, and no amount of hope will ever prepare you for where some roads finally end. As we journey through every unknown struggles, may the world be a little fairer to us. Thanks for reading.