It’s About The Journey
Three years ago, I had a really special opportunity to be a part of a Fellowship. Part of the fellowship involved a three-week backpacking trip through the Utah Desert. When I was talking to one of the fellows during our backpack trip, she shared how her dad had passed away from ALS, the same disease my dad had recently passed away from.
She was this incredible and feisty businesswoman, truly making a huge impact on the world. I remember her saying to me that some of the times that she missed her dad the most were when she had to make really hard business and life decisions, because he was the person she would go to for advice.
My dad was not the typical businessman, but he had an entrepreneur’s spirit and lived by the guidance of his heart. When I think about it now, he is the person that I want to go to when I need to make really hard life decisions, because I know he would reorient me towards my heart.
He has been on my mind a lot lately, because he had a mantra that he lived his life by, and would repeat to my family and me often. A mantra that I am trying to live my life by now. Most of us know it, and it sounds cliché, but when we live its wisdom, our lives are transformed for the better.
The mantra he repeated and lived by was, It is about the journey and not the destination.
When I think about this mantra these days, I don’t think my dad meant that it isn’t important to have our eyes set on a destination, but rather to truly enjoy the journey of getting there.
As I am in the process of dreaming up what is next for me, I see the deep importance of developing a vision of where I want to go. If we have a dream for our life, there is so much value in making it our destination and developing a plan of how we want to get there.
However, when we are solely destination-focused, we can live in the future and lose touch with the present moment. Sometimes what happens is that we want our dreams to happen so badly that we become tunnel visioned on the destination, and miss the beauty, magic and wisdom that comes with the journey. There are also times in our lives where dreams and desired destinations remain unclear, and these are the times when we are called even deeper into living and trusting the present moment of our journey.
If you think about a dream you have, you will notice how it is often accompanied by a positive emotion in your body. We are driven to go after our dreams, because they generate a way that we want to feel. When we focus on the journey and not solely the destination, we remember the importance of generating these feelings in our lives now and along the way to where we want to go. We can ask ourselves, “What are the ways I can cultivate this feeling in my day-to-day life now?”
This can look like taking five minutes to sit and savour a piece of good piece of chocolate and listen to the birds sing. This can mean taking 15 minutes to read a chapter of good fiction. And this can look like observing ourselves when we feel maxed out and taking 5 minutes to just rest and breathe. All of these tiny moments, whatever they are for each of us, can bring us in touch with making life about the journey. It doesn’t mean we are not working towards the destination, if we have one, but rather just choosing to enjoy the journey of getting there, too.
Something that I believe so strongly is that our dreams were placed into our hearts for the development of who we are, like a pilgrimage for our own souls. Our dreams exist, little and big, so that we become who we are meant to be.
When you listen to anyone share about achieving their dreams, they talk about how the journey took on unforeseen obstacles, challenges and detours along the way. They share how there are even moments of wanting to give up on their dreams altogether.
I believe that the times that test us during our journey are there to heal limiting beliefs, old stories and unhealthy patterns that no longer serve us. I believe that what we see as struggles are divinely orchestrated events that bring us in touch with old parts of us that are ready to be faced and released. They are like old clothes that need to go as they no longer fit the version of who we are meant to become.
Making our lives about the journey and not only about the destination, is cultivating the version of who we want to become into our lives now. It is trusting that we have everything we need in the present moment to face what we are called to overcome. It is a willingness to have our hearts break over and over again, until they break us open. And when our hearts break open, we will remember why we made the journey in the first place.
With love,
Laurel