The Freelance Retort: The Joy is in the Journey...still

Friday, March 7, 2014

The Joy is in the Journey...still

2014 is well into gear.

It’s March already—cloudy, cold, windy March—and by the end of the month the sun will be setting closer to 8 PM than 6 PM and I’ll have passed another one of those BIG birthday milestones. I won’t say which, but it’s the one that has a zero in it …so I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

When I was a kid I couldn’t wait for my birthday to arrive.

Next to Christmas it was the best day of the year, mostly because it involved the three P’s…parties, presents and pepperoni.

What?

I like pepperoni….

Just saying the words…“It’s my birthday”, carried a cache of magic and provided a passport to anywhere I wanted to go…at least in my over imaginative, narcissistic, little mind.

Each new year also meant I could stay up a little later, watch more TV…even stand on the street corner well into night singing with my acapella group.

Okay, I made that last part up…there was no group, just me…and no street corner either; just the corner of my Mom’s walk in closet that smelled of mothballs, which made it all the better.

Now, as I take another step up the ladder towards yet another gift subscription to AARP… I find myself again wallowing retrospectively in the cold soup of lost days.

I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s residue from last months“Valentine” Full Moon.

Throw in the recent Mercury retrograde—again—and the alignment or un-alignment of Venus, Mars and Uranus, which are always up to something…well…I don’t think I need to say anything more.

Now, far removed from "Kiddomcy", the idea of my b-day approaching is a troublesome one, and has been for a number of decades now.

Oh, sure…I still enjoy the ego driven, self-serving specialness of the day. You know, the usual… opening cards and presents, going out for dinner, celebrating the Druid Mud Bath Ritual with friends.

I've even been known to sneak off into the closet now and again to belt out a few tunes, but only when I’m alone…except for—well, that’s neither here nor there….

Over time, the further along the road I traveled, I noticed the destinations I set my sights on—the ones I thought would define me—so often ended up bypassed and undiscovered. Perhaps, even worse, the outposts I did happen upon sparkled more from a distance; their luster lost, along with their pursuit.

Eventually, the road took so many turns and detours, I found myself twisted, upside down in a maze of recalculations; it was all I could do just to try and get back on track.

When I finally stopped and took stock of the direction I’d been traveling, the roadmap seemed outdated, faded and full of holes.

And then it dawned on me: following a roadmap to a destination was probably the biggest mistake of all…at least for someone like me.

George Harrison, in his final goodbye of an album (another aging reference) said it best, paraphrasing Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat’s remark to Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there….”

Now, I’m able to look back and see the road I’ve been traveling from the sage distance of time.

I’ve come to understand that all the twists and turns were never detours or obstructions; just a part of the road I’d chosen; the road I missed so much of with my mind focused on the map.

The message has been shouted for so long, by so many others, but I was too lost in myself to hear it.

But I can hear it now…loud and clear, I hear it now.

The joy is in the journey…the destination, just the end.

Oh, sure, it’s easier to say than do…we all know that.

But I’m making sure I feel the sunshine on my face, every day, especially through the clouds…and the cold...and the wind...and....