It’s the Journey AND the Destination
To be fair, it really is both.
Yesterday I shared with the world that I’m on a hero’s journey. I want to be clear: I have a destination in mind; I plan to get somewhere.
So lies the quandary. You’ve heard that life is a journey, NOT a destination, right?
But that’s not exactly what Ralph Waldo Emerson said. What he actually said was:
“To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”
So does that mean writers don’t focus on where we are going? Hell no! Sometimes that’s exactly what we have to do. Otherwise, we might not even leave our ordinary world. There will be no trip. We’ll just stand there, shivering (or sweating, if you’d rather that be a summer metaphor).
Emerson meant that we should find the poignant, or meaningful, or momentous in every moment of the trek. That’s something worth taking a minute and reflecting on. But take the dang trip my friends. Start the journey — the time is now.
Maybe our destinations will change. Maybe we’ll get where we are going and we’ll realize that’s not where we want to be and we’ll want to go somewhere else. Who knows? Who cares?
What matters is that we set out on this adventure. We answer that call! (I heard it, did you? Is this it for you? Am I calling you now? If I am, listen up!)
As I said yesterday, I’m a writer “answering the call” to write on and contribute to the growing collective of writers on Medium. I see myself with thousands of followers, triple-digit claps, and hundreds of published stories.
That’s the journey I’m on. I don’t know what my trip will be like but I know where I’m going.
Emerson? Clearly, he’s my first mentor. I had no idea he’d surface today. I mean, I haven’t even read any of his work since, well, since the good old school days. But here he is. (Hey, thanks Emerson. Nice to meet you. I look forward to learning from you later on my trip.)
I wonder who else will appear in the coming days/weeks/months before I cross the threshold.
How about you? What is your vision? Where are you going?
What is your destination?
