9. Journey and Destination

There are paths, sometimes entire traditions, centred on destination. Heaven, Enlightenment, Nirvana. And the excessive focus on destination often asks us to be precisely where we are not. When you are on a journey however, it not wise to be obsessed with destination. Is it actually the right destination for you? Have you personally ever perceived or seen this destination? Are you assured that you will in fact reach this destination?

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans.
– John Lennon

Here is a more prudent and wise approach and one which the Stoics wholeheartedly advise: if you are on a journey, and are to be obsessed with anything, then be obsessed with journeying and the art of travelling well, and leave “destination” alone, to Fortune and Life, for anyhow by the “Dichotomy of Control” it is never in your real possession. As the saying goes: if you want to make God laugh, then tell Him about your plans.

Will you reach your heart’s desires? Will you make your plans come true? Will you reach Ithaka? Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. And maybe if you reach it, it won’t even be anymore what you had imagined or hoped for … But do you want to know what will happen for certain? You will be out at Sea on a journey called Life. And just like Odysseus you will necessarily go through many things, and you will therefore need to learn the Art of Navigation, or what Stoics like to call ... the Art of Living or Philosophy.

Ancient philosophy, which has at last returned in the West, in the form of modern Stoicism: the path where the destination is always ... the Journey, and where the practice is to learn how to Journey well.