On continuing, and the illusion of perfect endings.

David Clark-Sally
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

I’m great at setting goals, spending my energy focused on endings, finish lines, and being done. This seems very logical to me, because goals are measurable, and I can see a finish line. When there’s an ending, it means I get to check something off my list and move forward, leaving behind growing pains and that pesky “discipline” word.

For much of my life I’ve lived this way — As if there was a finite point I was working towards in the midst of anything hard:

  • Career challenges.
  • Difficult relationships.
  • Healthy living and exercise.
  • Unpleasant feelings and emotions.

I was always thinking about the end, laser-focused on getting out of the shit.

But somewhere a long the line, I realized this wasn’t working. My destination hardly ever looked like I’d anticipated. It wasn’t what I thought I’d been working towards. Or even worse… The destination never came. There was no ending, no checkmark on the list — just simply a continuation, a blurring together of experiences.

But what if everything blurring together was the way it was supposed to be? What if, instead of trying to find the way out of challenges, they were treated as just a stop along the way? Maybe it wasn’t about figuring out the ending. Maybe it was about continuing. Maybe I’d been making it too hard, putting too much pressure on escaping and not enough on being.

And something started happening… It became easier to see the ups and downs for what they are—a part of the story, not the whole. My mental energy was freed up to focus on the process, simply putting one foot in front of the other, and not wasting my time searching for perfect endings.

It’s easy to fall in love with the GPS version of the universe. There, just ahead, after that curve. Drive a little further, your destination is almost here. Done. You’ve arrived.

Of course, that’s not how it works. Not our careers, not our relationships, not our lives. You’ve always arrived. You’ve never arrived. Wherever you go, there you are. You’re never going to arrive because you’re already there.

There’s no division between the painful going and the joyous arriving. If we let it, the going can be the joyful part. It turns out that arrival isn’t the point, it can’t be, because we spend all our time on the journey.

— Seth Godin

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David Clark-Sally

Written by

Writer. Creative. Storyteller. Adventurer. Runner.

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