The journey and the destination
More, faster, next.
Do more, arrive faster, move to the next task / experience.
But what about the breathing spaces in between? The empty space that actually allows us to take in the experience we are going through?
Think of yesterday’s lunch, for example. When you bring it up in your memory, what exactly do you retrieve? How rich and detailed is the experience of your yesterday’s lunch? In the end… the richness of our experiences is what our life is composed of, not their quantity.
I think that, until you don’t have a reference point, is hard to notice the difference. I’ve had the privilege of having multiple reference points related to this topic:
Walking the Camino de Santiago, day by day, with the backpack on my bag and then taking the bus back from Muxia to Santiago de Compostella. The same 100 km was done in a 5-day walking experience and then in a 3h bus sitting. While I was watching out of the window, retrieving from my memory that walking path, very fine details rushed back to me. I could zoom in on the experience at a very high level. Then I realized the poverty of the trip back compared to the walking one.
I love traveling by motorized means, so the topic is the attention put into the experience itself, rather than on the destination: Muxia was the destination, but the experience was the walking.
My first long trip abroad was at 12, when our French teacher took us on a Europe trip by coach which lasted one month. We slept in the coach, ate in the parkings and washed at gas stations. It was amazing! After that, I repeated it 3 more times. So… I really love traveling by motorized means. :)) The destination in this case was France, but the experience was the whole 1-month trip. Most of the memories from that period are related to the time spent on the bus and the experiences I’ve had together with my colleagues – not the destination itself.
I have recently visited Norway (one of the places very dear to my heart) for a conference and, together with my colleagues, decided to go to a famous viewpoint on top of a mountain. The plan was to go by cable car, but things got arranged in such a way that we ended up on the walking trail instead. As we were of different physical conditions and were “city” equipped, it wasn’t an easy journey, but now everybody remembers the experience in high detail. It left a mark on our hearts. All of us agreed that going by cable car wouldn’t have been the same, as the most important part was our journey together, not the destination itself. But we didn’t know this before leaving the hotel. 🙂
The list could go on, but this is the point: look back, find a reference point of an event that brought warmth to your heart and go as deep as you can into that experience, like you are in a room and are trying to observe as many details as possible of that room. Now, look at the “destination” of that experience. How do you feel the richness of details?
As soon as you remember your reference point, life becomes a journey, not a destination. Living your life is the most important thing you can do for yourself and others.
Namaste
