Destination vs. Journey

I try to avoid clichés.  With such a versatile language that offers such a large word choice like I feel like I can do better to create my own ways to expressing myself than to simply parrot a phrase that has been in circulation for, well forever.

One cliché is, “It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.”  When I hear that I understand the point that is searching for expression.  And yet I can’t help but to mentally criticize.  I have been making a mental list of those who have said that phrase.  At some point I will invite a few of them on a road trip.  I’ll tell them that we’re going to San Diego.  I think that is a nice destination. I hope they share my enthusiasm.  We’ll meet on the determined day and the set hour and load up the car.  We’ll have our bags, pillows, books and snacks.   We’ll hop in the car and start driving.

I’ll head out East on the I-10 through Phoenix.  We’ll drive to Quartzite on near the California border.  We’ll then head south on the 95 arriving eventually at Yuma.  From there I will take the 8 west and eventually get back to the I-10.  At that point it is a simple northbound hour back to the Valley where we started.

I will announce triumphantly from my driveway where we started that it was a successful road trip.  When the protests arise that I am crazy and that we never got to where we were going I will simply reply that it’s not so much about where we did or didn’t get, but that it was the journey that was important.  I will feel a petty sense of victory over those silly cliché users and will go my way feeling like I did the universe a favor by throwing their words in their faces.

And yet.

Perhaps they have reason.

Yesterday I heard the phrase, “See the end from the beginning.”  It is a phrase that I only recently understood.  Initially I understood it from the perspective of looking down upon a planned course, like a map.  I could locate my starting point and I could find the destination.  I could easily connect the two dots with a bold red line.

More recently my understanding changed.  My vantage point moved from being on an elevated plain looking down, to being confined to the actual starting point, more like the one that I experience in my life.  With that perspective seeing the end from the beginning means to know where one is going despite the fact that vision is limited by many obstacles.  This means to see not with the physical eyes but to see with an eye of vision.  Arriving at that level of clarity often is the result of clairvoyance or tapping into a source above our own.

And it is here that my journey-promoting friends may have reason.  Because my thinking may still be too map-like in its understanding of travel.  My notion retains its from A to B confines.  What if after all it is from A back to A, just like my silly destinationless road trip?

Life may be a series of journeys that take us back to our departure spot.  We travel in full circles arriving, to our surprise, back where we started.  When we find ourselves again where we started we may curse ourselves, others or a higher power that we blame for taking no interest in our well being.  If we do, we may have failed to see the end from the beginning.  We may not be seeing with an eye of vision.  When our setting seems familiar perhaps we should take a look at ourselves to see if there is any change.  It may just be that there was truly value in the journey and the real destination is a better self that has grown, matured and improved.

And to echo Job’s words which themselves have become cliché, we come into the world with nothing and leave with nothing.  Life then is a journey with no real destination, unless of course that destination has been to arrive at a better version of ourselves.