Hopelessly lost, but making good time...
I was standing in a store the other day, and I picked up a little plaque that read, “Enjoy the Journey.” I flipped it over and found a small, gold-and-black sticker: “Made in China.” I smiled, thinking that little plaque had already made quite a journey. I wondered if it enjoyed it. And I wondered what it would be like for a Chinese factory worker to spend day after day making small plaques to be sold on the other side of the planet, reminding Americans who are buying Q-Tips and bananas to “Enjoy the Journey.” What’s the journey like for that factory worker? What’s it like for me? What’s it like for the person who’ll ultimately buy that little plaque and hang it over a messy desk in a human resources department or on the wall in a wooded cabin?
Sometimes it’s easy to see our lives as a journey, but so often in the repetition of work and meals, cleaning the house and binge-watching bad shows, it can feel like we're stuck in place. We want to think of ourselves as adventurous explorers hiking through uncharted mountains, when in truth we’re more like a top, spinning just fast enough to stay standing without really going anywhere. And if we’re honest with ourselves, the mountain hiking sounds a lot like…work. So we settle for eating bad food and watching bad TV and working long hours at jobs that are only marginally fulfilling, our days going by all too fast as we naively assume we’ll get to the adventure in the future. Someday.
Yes, I realize this isn’t a very festive-sounding post so far. But we went to a funeral yesterday for a friend who died in his sleep at 37, leaving behind a wife and four young kids, so I’m thinking more about the journey today than I am feeling festive. He wasn’t one of those people who spun in place, instead making a great life as a church pastor who cared endlessly for others. Yet I’m sure he was still surprised to wake up on the other side of death at 37. Who expects to put on their pajamas at 37 and have that be it?
It seems to me most of us have a vague belief deep inside that “they” will cure death before it notices us. Yet century after century, that doesn’t seem to happen. So we keep plodding along in our journey, knowing in our saner moments that someday we, too, will face our own mortality, ready or not.
The average person’s journey here in the US is, most simply, following a road from birth to death that lasts about 78 years. It’s a little longer in some places, a lot shorter in others. Regardless, that’s not a very long road to travel. Which leaves us wondering how we’re supposed to travel it. “Enjoy the Journey” suggests our travels are mostly about our own enjoyment. But we hear pretty consistently (in research and countless anecdotes) that living only for our own pleasure provides happy moments yet leaves us unfulfilled and less happy overall. Living only for others has a similar outcome—making us feel like we never enjoyed our own life, instead spending our days just making plaques for others.
So how can we best enjoy the journey? My wife’s answer is, “We should always look for ways to find joy in the journey—joy in every day.” She’s married to me, so obviously finding joy for her is more like panning for gold than like a kid’s Easter egg hunt, but still, she manages. For most of us, it’s likely to be a life-long mixture of ups and downs, ebbs and flows rather than a constant state of joy. We all have times when we’re truly enjoying the journey, and times when it’s hard to catch even a glimpse of that joy.
Creating a life that mixes caring for others with caring for ourselves shows up in the happiness research as helpful. It also helps to find work that we enjoy. Doing work we don’t like just for money to spend on weekends is a good way to look back on a long, dull journey with regret. Having creative outlets, good people to spend time with, a faith and a community to share it with are all things research says help us enjoy the journey. And spending less time on social media can also help.
Ultimately, it’s useful for all of us to at least occasionally be mindful that life is short—whether we get 37 or 137 years, life is short. So listen to my wife (like I have to), and do your best to find joy wherever you can along the way…