Are you in the middle of a journey right now?
Maybe it’s a literal one and you are traveling from one place to another.
Maybe it’s an internal one instead where you are on a journey of discovery about yourself, your life, your spirituality, or your purpose.
Or maybe it’s just the one we are all on – this twisting, winding, joyful yet confusing journey of life.
Whatever journey you are on, what is your focus while you are on it?
Is it the journey itself?
Or the destination?
For me, I am often focused on the destination. I want to see the results of a test sometimes before it’s even taken. I want to know what happens immediately after that next bend in the road. In fact, as I woke up this very morning, I woke up frustrated as I considered a destination that seemed too far away.
But over and over again, as I was this morning with this very poem, I am reminded that it is the journey not the destination that matters.
This poem by Mary Oliver begins with her observations of the rain and what joy and excitement each raindrop must feel as it leaves the clouds and begins its journey to the ground.
“Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!”
Later on in the poem, the journey of the rain to the ground is over and the sky has cleared. This is the moment when she acknowledges that she, the tree, and the stars in the sky are present to the moment simply as themselves. There they stand in awe of the last journey they were blessed to be a part of as well as in anticipation of the next about to begin.
“my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the wild and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.”
I love how she ended the poem with excitement about the journeys ahead instead of remaining locked on a single destination.
So what journey are you on right now?
Where do you want your focus to be?
