It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination

In 2012, my husband and I joined my mom and my aunt and uncle to clean out my grandparents’ house.  As you can imagine, it wasn’t an easy trip.  The last time we were there was for my grandpa’s funeral.  I spent a lot of time there growing up and was very close to my grandparents, so I was very attached to the house and the idea of selling their things wasn’t easy.  But there were good things too.  As we went through things, we had good – and not so good – memories and I found things I didn’t even know about.  And of course, all the reminiscing led to a lot of laughter.

One evening we were finishing dinner and about to have dessert.  We cleared the table and I got the plates and forks out for dessert.  My aunt and uncle asked why we needed new cutlery.  I told them so there wouldn’t be bits of supper in our dessert.  To me, it was the most natural thing in the world.  Why WOULDN’T you get new cutlery for dessert?  Honestly, I thought it was just gross to think that there would be bits of supper in my yummy dessert.  My uncle is my mom’s brother.  They grew up in the same house, and I’m sure my grandma always brought out new cutlery for dessert, so I’m not sure how it happened that we weren’t all on the same page.

My uncle looked at me and said, “It’s all going to the same place” to which I quickly replied “It’s about the journey, not the destination”.  My husband and my mom laughed.  My husband wasn’t surprised at all, and my mom agreed with me.  I am someone who never has the witty comeback when it’s needed.  I always think of the right thing to say when it is much too late, so you can imagine how pleased I was that I came up with something good and people actually laughed.

And now I think about how true it is in life.  It’s a cliché, but it’s true.  Life really is about the journey, not the destination.  If you are a spiritual person, you may take that literally, that what you do now will affect what happens to you after you die.  But thinking about the here and now, I think it’s really important to focus more on the journey instead of the destination.  Life will inevitably bring us things that are hard, and sometimes it may seem that there is more bad than good.  But I think we need to celebrate everything we can, big and small, because there are always going to be more small things than big ones.

About a year ago I started a gratitude journal.  Over time, it has changed to a joy journal.  Nothing fancy, just a plain notebook where every day before bed I write one thing that gave me joy that day. Some days it is harder to think of things, and sometimes it is the simplest things.  But no matter how bad a day has been, there is almost always something I can find – even if it brought me contentment more than joy.  One terrible day I couldn’t find anything that brought me joy, but I did remember something that made me laugh out loud.  Other times it has been that the new recipe I tried worked out, a bubble bath on a long and not so easy day, or getting together with friends we haven’t seen for a long time.

When I look back on my journey, I can see how far I have come.  And I know that the journey ahead will hold both hard things and easy things.  But it is a journey and that in itself is worth celebrating. At about this time of the year a friend once told me “You are better than you were a year ago, and a year from now you will be better than you are now”.  Now she tells me that every year around the same time.  And that, my friends, is definitely worth celebrating.