The Journey

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
– Ursula Le Guin

In the summer of 1993, a young Reuters photographer covering a story in Mogadishu, Somalia was stoned to death along with 3 other journalists. Before his death at only 22, Dan Eldon had accumulated thousands of photographs and created dozens of journals filled with his images, writings, memorabilia and drawings. Eldon’s mother Kathy assembled 17 of his journals to memorialize her son’s vision. Dan’s life and death and creative legacy reveal a pure and inspirational journey. His sister Amy recalls, “Dan would push my boundaries and challenge my fears.” The compilation of his life’s work, The Journey is the Destination has sold over 200,00 copies. http://www.daneldoncollection.com.

If you did a year-end inventory, did the memorable moments on your list come as the result of a precise strategy and arrive with a pre-ordered bouquet of crimson roses? Or could you say that some of your most profound or even life changing experiences dropped like a giant self-pruned eucalyptus branch in the middle of a windless night?

If you look back along the path of your life, are the pivotal moments really the pinnacles of achievement, or are the significant, fully lived segments more of a filmic version – long stretches complete with struggle, fleeting moments with disappearing tricks, or lingering love? Do anger, disappointment, failure, loss, or fear precede any of the high points? When you encountered a fallen branch along the path, how did you proceed?

I’m not advocating you abandon your goals, but what if you simply loosened your grip on them – diversified a little? So if you are stuck in holiday traffic, or a raging blizzard delays your flight for 48 hours, or UPS loses your package, or worse – if your relationship gets all tangled up, and your family thinks you have completely misunderstood – what if you got very still, looked inward, reached down into the dark hole and peered ahead at other possibilities? What if instead of holding onto the crushing disappointment when the limb comes crashing down, you glanced up and down and all around and celebrated the tiniest glittering moments that might lie hidden deep in the cracks and crevices. They might just manifest with the sound of a song, the brush of a hand, or the promise of another chance.

Take that eucalyptus branch and chop it’s length to warm the hearth, or lay the palm fronds on the sand and lie down on its bed, adorn the snowy pine bough with twinkling colored lights or draw with ink a dozen Spartan branches. Splatter paint on your pristine canvas, cross out every other line in your newly minted manuscript, resize a haunting image or reconfigure your darkest thoughts. Pluck handfuls of missing pieces from unlikely places and tie a knot with slippery silk. It’s not the trophy and the fanfare that brings the greatest joy. It’s in the unexpected moments and the taking down of fear, in the winds that blow debris and the roadblocks in your way, that you discover what you hadn’t planned, a truer form of lifeblood – a much dearer destination.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.
– Lao Tzu (c.604 – 531 B.C.)