It’s not the destination, it’s the journey
Ralph waldo emerson
I have heard of the idea of “love the journey and not the destination or the result” for stuff in life (career, relationships, etc…), but it’s never clicked with me. The journey is often arduous, filled with pain and mistakes…yes there are the good times, but for me personally, I often see more of the bad than good, which almost takes away any gratitude I have for the journey. While I felt like 2021 was mostly stressful and 2022 would be no different, I met two people (both of whom I will not name in this blog) that taught me two things to appreciate more of my journey in life.
The first thing is getting to meet strangers you instantly click with — it makes you feel like you’re not as alone in life as you think you are because you share experiences or similar viewpoints in life. As 2021 came to an end, I was still stuck at a job I hated. I wasn’t doing anything new or exciting and many of my friends were leaving Tucson for new jobs. In January of 2022, I was invited to go on a trip to Flagstaff over the weekend. I was going to decline because I didn’t want to make the drive up and socialize with people I didn’t know (got really comfortable with my weekend introvert vibe…), but some part of me was just saying…”Jerry, just go uppp. I think the change in pace will be good for ya. You also haven’t met some of the people you’re going up with in a while. It’ll be good to catch up.” So I decided to go and carpooled with some people from Tucson.
The carpool was where I met this first friend of mine (I guess we were strangers at that time before we became good friends). During the 5-6 hours of driving, we had such good conversations about job satisfaction, the Christian faith and how it intersects into career, what serving others looks like, travel experiences, and the list goes on….I was a bit surprised myself that I could hold such conversations with somebody I just met. We hung out most of the time together at Flagstaff, and that’s where I met the second person. These two people came to Tucson together but drove up separately for this Flagstaff trip. After spending time in Flagstaff for a day, my two new friends, another person I carpooled up with, and I decided to hike all day in Sedona the next day. And on the drive back down, this second person and I had conversations about quitting your work, volleyball, and what it looks like to be happy in a completely different job. And it was just like a Tedtalk in this car on the entire trip… so many ideas shared and explored and talked about. But the one thing that really stuck out in my conversations was career satisfaction. One showed me what it looks like to love your job and one showed me what it looks like and feels like to quit your job…both viewpoints that I wondered about myself in my career change journey. I felt like the struggles I was facing weren’t unique to just me.
The second part of loving the journey is having the people you meet along the way unexpectedly change your life for the better. As I mentioned, my 2021 felt really boring and I really didn’t have any different expectations for 2022, but after meeting these two friends of mine, they changed that by injecting a lot of fun and travel into my life. I was travelling with them all around Arizona on weekends. I was doing new and challenging hikes. I played 4 volleyball tournaments in 3 months…which is insane because I normally play like 1 volleyball tournament every…2-3 months. All these new and exciting things I was doing decreased my stress, actually made me more organized with my time, and helped me focus more on hobbies and career change. I ended up writing a vision statement for myself and made sure that my daily goals were aligned with that vision. As the former monk Jay Shetty said:
“You only learn new things about yourself when you do new things with yourself”
I don’t think I would’ve done any of this if it weren’t for the people I met. I feel like the journey has become more…meaningful in a way because a sense of excitement has been added.
I can go on and on about what these friends have taught me…and maybe I will in another post, but all I can say is that these two people will always have a special place in my life. I am sad that they are leaving, and that’s something I know I will have to deal with for a couple of days, but I know for sure that I am glad that I got to meet them. And I’ll know we’ll stay in touch for the years to come.
I’d love to hear from you about any experiences or stories you have about meeting friends or relationships in the most unexpected times or settings!
As always,
Be Confident. Stay Curious.
