I came across a quote the other day and I'm not even sure who to give the credit:
“The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination”
When you love walking, the grind keeps you alive. When you love the destination, you usually can't wait to put your feet up.
There will always be another destination—another goal to tackle or achievement to unlock. But there really is only one walk. And the walking is continuous.
I got punched in the mouth when I read this quote. I realized that I'm a destination guy. I love the destination.
When I start a project or start a work week or whatever—I struggle to keep my eyes on the next step. It feels like I always keep an eye down range, at the target.
For the abundance of motivational posters that tell you to just love the journey, I'm sort of failing at understanding what that's supposed to mean.
I think I'm trying to love the journey, trying to be present, but nostalgia has a way of lodging itself in my mind, right between my present thoughts and planning for the future.
I get stuck ruminating on something from a year ago, or 5, or 10. And then I get down a path wondering if it was actually as great of a time as I think, or am I just thinking about a snapshot in the past when I went to the gym a lot and had endless free time?
Either way you slice it, those are not present thoughts. And while we're always going to look back or forward in our life, I want to be the guy that loves the walking more than the destination.
And right now, the walking is pretty darn good. Lately I've been in the practice of looking at everything around me in my current life and it feels like I could not be more filled with joy. I'm just thankful.
And we’ll always be able to complain about little details in our day, here and there. But it wasn't until I stepped back and looked at everything in life—my family, my job, our home, our endless support—that I really started to understand what it means to love the walking.