What if we got it all wrong?

AKA musings on life

I’ve been in deep reflection mode of late. The apocalyptic levels of snow in Montreal are barricading me in my house, allowing me time to thoughtfully sip tea while I muse on where my life is taking me. Honestly, it’s quite a vibe.

And amid the marvelling at the beauty of a winter wonderland, occasionally interrupted by the blaring of a snow plough, I had a revelation that I may well have been looking at my life all wrong.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about the future, where I’m headed, what the hell I’m going to do, how my life will change. And as I was spiralling in this cocktail of existential dread, one thought came through loud and clear;

There is no destination. It’s all journey.

See, we have been taught to think of our lives as these little chunks, like a computer game with levels of achievement. You graduate college, you get a few points. You meet a romantic partner, get a few points. Double that if you get married. Truck load of points for you if you have a kid and a bonus points if you have more than one. Work your way up the career ladder? Points upon points.

And we kind of think when we hit these markers, life plateaus a bit. Because we’ve done what we’re supposed to, right? Things should settle. Because we achieved.

But whatever it is we achieve, it breaks open a new part of us. We have to learn who we are and how to be within this new context. So there is no plateau, there is no point where you get to settle - we are ever-growing, ever-evolving. It’s all journey.

And I’m not saying that as a bad thing. It’s not like you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labour, sit back and rest on your laurels occasionally. But perhaps the root of some of the unhappiness or frustration we feel at times is we feel we should maybe be able to stop time for a while when we hit a major achievement. We forget to allow for the fact that the world keeps turning, circumstances change, curve balls are always being thrown.

So maybe if we stopped looking at life as level of achievement, waiting for someone to give us a cookie, a handshake and a well done every time we unlock a new level of life’s game, maybe we get excited about how we journey through it, who we’ll become, rather than what we'll get, in material, financial, tangible form.

Maybe what we get is just to be. To just exist on this spinning rock until we turn to dust. We get to dance through each level of the journey, becoming more and more of who we are. Until we are no more.

There is no destination. It’s all journey.