The Joy is in the Journey

For much of my life, I was trying to get some place.  Although the place varied with the activity I was involved in at the time I was always aiming for some fixed point in the future.  If it was business or professional matters, then I was thinking about that job or position or business deal that would finally be satisfying and make me large sums of money so I'd never have to worry.

I'm a physical fitness nut, which was ironic when I was drinking and drugging, and I was always trying to get to some point of physical fitness where I would look and feel just the way I wanted to.  It was, of course, even more true of my drinking.  I really only wanted to get to that point of being high or feeling good and yet like all those other places I aimed for, I didn't recognize it when I was there or in my headlong rush to get there I overshot the mark.

Then as I became sober in the program I often thought the same way, aiming first for 90 days then a year or two or five.  Something was always missing.  When the point in time, the goal, came, it wasn't quite what I thought, or wanted, or something.  In sobriety, I began to hear about living in the present, living in the present fully and richly.  I began to understand that my life was a portion of a process with no end that was clear to me.  My life was and is this moment, was and is this now.

Someone said in A.A., "The joy is in the journey." and now I can understand the expression.  I am not aiming for some near or distant point in time when things will be OK, or optimum, or serene.  I am moving with you on a journey I do not fully understand and at this moment I am very much enjoying this part of the trip.