Hugo Martins

It Is the Journey That Matters

A quote of a quote from “It’s never too late to stretch your wings: Why I got a Ph.D. at age 66”:

As one of my favorite authors, Ursula K. Le Guin, wrote, “It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

We all have an end where we are going to. We all have a vision, a mission, objectives to achieve. We all are always tremendously busy trying to get to our end, to finish our journey…but then what? We (sometimes) reach our journey and then seem to block and know not what to do. Why does that happen?

It may be so because we are so focused on the ending, our end goals, that we forget the journey, we forget where we are going and why. It also happens (sometimes) that we fail to reach our end destination…why? Maybe we are not enjoying our journey, maybe that’s why we are procrastinating feeling frustrated, not wanting to do it because the journey isn’t enjoyed. Notice that “enjoyed” is quite different than “enjoyable”, we all need to do things we don’t want from time to time.

If we focus on the journey, if we transform our journey into something we enjoy, everything seems easier and that perception is what will get us going, even when times are rough. We will also align our journey more frequently with our vision so that we are always moving towards that vision, towards that ending and, in the end, it is that journey that is truly important, sometimes more so than the end of the journey.