COMING A GREAT DISTANCE

The other day I heard myself saying, "As long as I'm heading in the right direction." That's what's important, a sense of momentum, of being on track, heading toward a place I want to go. I may think there's a particular end I'm heading to but no matter what I think, I'm only heading in a general direction.We don't arrive someplace and stay; we always move on. Life is constantly evolving, one arrival leading to another, one vista opening to a new one up ahead. "In the right direction"... fueled by the creative energy that comes from encountering the unexpected, from change and serendipity. My arms open wide, ready for anything.
     I think of the times I was fixated on a goal and thought if I could just reach it my life would be different, I'd leave my problems, contradictions, doubts behind. There was an ultimate end point and, reaching it, I'd be transformed. Of course, there were plenty of times when that didn't happen, or didn't happen in the way I wanted it to. Then I'd feel like a failure. The feeling of failure is oppressive, a tight lid on energy, a sign that says, Why bother? That feeling pushed me back, more than ever distant from the energy I needed to come anywhere near my goals.          Life showed me the damage that kind of magical thinking did. It turned my life into black or white, with nothing in between. It was too painful. Time after time, I refused to see that I couldn't control the results of my actions. I couldn't accept that my deepest desires, all the energy in the world might not deliver me where I'd decided I needed to go. I thought it was all up to me and if things didn't work out it was my fault. I wasn't good enough.
     I didn't realize how hard a part of me was searching for another way to live, a way to be all right no matter what. Pain showed me that the only way to move out of pain was to surrender, not my goals but my fixation on my goals. It told me to give up labels like success and failure, and embrace whatever came to me. It taught me about acceptance - of both what I thought of as good or bad. I had to find a way to be all right with that, to give up labels like success and failure, to accept things however they turned out. I saw ideas of yes or no, good or bad, there and not there loose their power over me and be replaced by a different kind of power, the kind that comes from surrendering my ideas for control. And after a while I wanted those lessons. I wanted to surrender because each time I did, I felt energy was released, energy that had been tied up by my insistence on getting my own way and crushed if I didn't. With that energy I had a better chance of moving forward - of heading in the right direction. I relaxed; I began to feel free.
     My life is a long slow evolution, a series of arrivals and departures, of learning and unlearning. It's a wonderful thing to have an ongoing sense of new beginnings, of moving from insight to insight and feeling what was fragmented and jumbled inside slowly becoming unified, whole, on a path that is no longer dependent on win or loose, success or failure. I, and all of us, are in an ongoing process of becoming that has no ultimate goal and will only stop when we do.
     "The journey, not the arrival, matters."
     "Every day is a journey and the journey itself is home."
     I am always coming a great distance in order to begin.