We stand at a moment in time when we have thousands of years of recorded human history and wisdom passed down both orally and in writing. Wisdom about the human experience. Wisdom of how to orient oneself and how to navigate life among others. Such wisdom has been refined through countless mediums. Fairy tales are a powerful example. They originated as oral folk tales told by ordinary people, most of whom, especially in medieval and early modern Europe, could neither read nor write. These stories were shared around firesides, in village squares, and during long winters by peasants. Over generations they were retold, reshaped, and polished through collective memory, gradually distilling profound truths about human nature, morality, danger, love, justice, etc. The fairy tales we now see in Disney movies, even if sanitized, still carry on the same motifs as their ancient oral predecessors. Another medium is politics itself. The long history of humanity provides a detailed record of political systems that have been tried and tested, ultimately allowing us to reflect on their practicality. Yet the medium most pertinent to our present focus is the adage—the proverb or cliché that has been repeated so often it risks losing its impact. Beneath the familiarity, however, these sayings retain immense meaning, proven by the very fact that they have been used, tested, and confirmed across generations and cultures. Their endurance is evidence of their truth.
All that to say, I’ll admit the title is a bit tongue-in-cheek. However, as click-baity as it may sound, I believe thinking of it in this reversal will reorient us toward its proper formulation: It’s about the journey, not the destination.
The inspiration for this essay comes from the 1988 book by Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist. The novel was originally printed in just 900 copies and sold very few in its first few years. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when the right people discovered it, that the book began to spread like wildfire. It has now sold millions and millions of copies worldwide. It’s not a perfect book, and it contains several themes I disagree with, but it is nonetheless a short, simple, and enjoyable read. The story follows a young shepherd named Santiago who, guided by recurring dreams, omens, and a natural passion for adventure, sets off on a journey across North Africa to find treasure at the pyramids of Egypt. And what else would we expect besides a host of challenges along the way? If you take away only one lesson from the book, it certainly would not be “it’s about the destination, not the journey.” In fact, that’s what makes an adventure story an adventure story. This classic motif stretches all the way back to Abraham and Moses journeying to the Promised Land, Odysseus voyaging to reach his family back in Ithaca, Dorothy traveling to the Land of Oz, Bilbo trekking to the Lonely Mountain, and, in this case, Santiago journeying to the Pyramids of Egypt. In the hero’s journey, a character sets out on a mission with the destination as their primary goal, only to discover that the true reward lies not solely in what awaits at the end, but in the character it built to get there.
So what’s behind this reversal I’m proposing?
Early in Santiago’s journey, he meets a crystal merchant and works for him for about a year to earn the money he needs to continue traveling. One of the things Santiago learns about the merchant is that he is a devout Muslim with a lifelong dream of making the pilgrimage (the Hajj) to Mecca—a ritual every able-bodied Muslim is supposed to do at least once in their lifetime. Despite having saved enough money, the merchant repeatedly refuses to make the trip. His explicit reason: “Because it is the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive… I’m afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living.” Here we see a twofold rationale. First, actually arriving in Mecca would fulfill his life’s greatest dream, leaving him to conjure a new goal—one he cannot imagine being anywhere near as inspiring. Second, Mecca serves as a kind of religious and existential crutch: as long as the pilgrimage remains unaccomplished yet still feasible, Islam obligates him to keep living in order to one day complete it. By perpetually delaying the trip, he ensures he always has a divinely mandated reason to carry on. For the merchant, then, the destination remains an ideal toward which he makes no active progress.
Most schools of philosophy like to hone in on what precedes what. Existential philosophy posits that existence precedes essence. Therefore, you are born and then create your own meaning. Most theories of metaphysics assert that causes always precede effects. Phenomenology asserts that experience precedes theory. If we throw out the terms “journey” and “destination,” what precedes what? It seems clear that the destination precedes the journey. But we can even toy with a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma and question whether something can even be a destination if a journey has not been commenced. As for the crystal merchant, he has established a destination yet he has not begun the journey. Thus, Mecca for the merchant is not so much a destination as it is an aspiration. I will leave the question of what comes first—the journey or the destination—up for debate, but one thing seems certain and is the crux of my thesis: you are not, archetypically speaking, actually “on the journey” if you don’t have a destination, or if you aren’t deliberately endeavoring toward one.
My goal is not to turn this into just another cliché, self-help essay of “a goal without a plan is just a wish,” or “you’ll never hit a target you don’t set,” or “failing to plan is planning to fail,” sayings which all have their own respective merit. More so, my objective is to offer a reflection: do we tell ourselves we are “on the journey” when we have no real destination, or similarly, do we have the ideal of a destination yet aren’t on the journey?
The greatest example I find among people, including myself, is that we often deem life as “the journey.” In many ways it certainly is, but when we refer to the classic motifs of what the hero’s journey is, it is a particular point of focus within life that the protagonist moves toward, wrestling with the barriers in the way while still marching forward. Even if brought to a halt or a crossroads—like Santiago working for the merchant for an extended period, a hindrance not in his original plan—the destination is still in mind, and his actions remain oriented toward it. Does that mean if one gives up for a period and then returns that this wasn’t part of the journey? Such a question misses my point. Rather, the problem I find is when we have a destination, commence the journey, grow complacent in our progression, remain stagnant, and still tell ourselves it’s okay because it’s “a part of the journey,” only to undermine the destination. It was the destination—be it a particular virtue, a career, love, spirituality, and so forth—that got the journey underway. And yes, the journey will build character as one toils on, but to stop actively pursuing the destination is to forget why you set off in the first place: it was about the destination, not the journey. The real travails of the journey are whether you think the destination is actually still worth pursuing, not becoming complacent in stagnation by taking refuge in “it’s part of the journey.” For instance, when Odysseus made the stop at Circe’s island, one of his stops on his odyssey home to his wife and son, he considered staying and not carrying on because perhaps continuing the difficult return home was no longer a destination he desired. Or when Bilbo is lost in the tunnels alone in the Misty Mountains, he questions whether the treasure they pursue was ever even worth putting his life at risk. These are questions that put the destination on trial. This is much different from holding the ideal of, for example, “I believe it’s wrong to talk maliciously and destructively (as opposed to constructively) behind peer’s backs, and its abolition is a destination worth pursing ” while falling into the habit of doing so by reassuring myself it’s fine because I’ll eventually grow out of this vice, becuase “ it’s part of my journey toward virtue and maturity.” Or, “my destination is to be in a relationship with Christ” but I know that with age comes wisdom and most devout Christians don’t establish that earnest relationship until later in life so I’ll simply hold onto that ideal, live and learn for now, and preferably hope that the destination journeys to me. Maybe at some point in time you do reach the journey’s end, and you can retrospectively call such seasons of cognizant contentment as part of your overall story—we’re all on our own walk through life—but it’s foolish to conflate aimless wandering and wishful thinking with considered trajectory. The trap is to be satisfied in averring, “it’s part of my journey,” instead of acknowledging the true source of aspirational inertia: is it a destination I believe worth pursuing?
It’s okay—and I would even argue good—to wrestle with the worthiness of our goals, aspirations, and the destinations we set for ourselves in life. But the essence of adventure, the very definition of a journey, is to move forward. So when we say “it’s about the journey, not the destination,” that’s all well and good, but the deeper question must be addressed: am I even on the journey?