Let Your Journey Be Your Destination.

I know you’ve all heard the old saying “it’s the journey, not the destination!'“ I’ve said it myself many times. Then today I remembered my husband telling me a few weeks ago(I can’t for the life of me remember where he heard it), that the journey is the destination. I liked it when I heard it, but like many things I let it go. Today has been one of those days of self reflection and this saying popped back into my head. Like most blogs I write, this topic stems from my own experiences. I just hope y’all can relate or, at the very least, my writing is well enough to keep you interested for a minute. It was today when I was reorganizing, reevaluating, and prioritizing my goals and commitments that I found myself too easily getting caught up in the destination. Where my goals led, or what I expected of myself. I realized that focusing on the end gave me anxiety. What pressure we put on ourselves focusing on the end, the goal.

What if my goal was the journey? What if every step forward, and even the slips backwards, were the whole point? When did we forget that every step we take is in fact, a new destination? Whether forward, backwards, sideways, up or down, every single move we make means we are no longer where we used to be. Bam, we just had a journey and reached a new destination as well. When we get too focused on our destinations, as in the end goal, we lose so much life in the middle. I know I spoke of this in my last blog, those good old crabs and their perfect shell exchange, but this week I am elaborating with some new insight. I always knew it was about the journey, I live that and I preach it, even when I have to remind myself and reset. What I failed to realize was just how many destinations we reach daily.

Let’s take weight loss, I know this is something most people have faced at some point. It is so daunting to say I need to lose 50lbs. What if we switched that around. What if I have lost only a few but I put on my pants one day and all of a sudden I can zip them without laying down on the bed and holding my breath? Sure, they aren’t falling off and I don’t need to buy all new clothes two sizes smaller, but I can sit in these jeans without cutting circulation off to my legs. That is a win right there, even if not the end goal.

I know I have said this before as well, but we get so caught up in the end because we get so caught up in the race. We are looking side to side to see where everyone else is that our goals become less about us and more about what matches the world around us. Well as much as I love this world, and I love all those that inhabit it, I cant say that matching pace is something to strive for. It’s very much the blind leading the blind out there. I may not be where others think I should, I may not even be where I want to be, BUT I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I have had a million destinations this lifetime and I am ready for a million more, Every stop either gave me something or took something, gave me joy or gave me sadness- sometimes both, but every stop was another pin on my map and it is impossible not to look back and see my progress. Whether I changed for the better or had some hard lessons to learn, I made it here! Here brought me you, reading this right now, maybe remembering all the wonderful dots on your map. Maybe, just maybe, you are forgetting about your end goal and celebrating the amazing destination you’ve reached in this moment.

I found myself getting so caught up in where I want to go that I almost forgot to love exactly where I am. Even if where I am is a free fall off a cliff. I will fly when it’s time and so will you. In the meantime enjoy the view! That’s what I am about to do, maybe I will see you out there.