It's all about the journey

'Everyone's on a journey these days' writes John Elder in the Sunday Age this week, as he discusses the prevalence of the term in modern lingo. Several well known thinkers weigh into the discussion with their own perceptions of the use of the word - from a comparison with "aspirational voters and their ambitions", to a way to make sense of enduring hardship.

I often think of my life and discoveries as a journey, and the whole article got me to wondering why. Going through the many levels of education that I've encountered, I had a general sense of waiting for the world to start, for my life to start. Things always seemed to be happening while I was waiting for something else to really kick in. Some time in my mid-20s (and still enrolled as a full time student), I realised that there wasn't going to be any grand starting moment, where someone handed me a key and I opened the door to the rest of my life. Life was now, and I had better start actually paying attention to it. That life that I'd been thinking of as being fixed in a place in the future had actually been going on all around me, while I was patiently waiting to grow up. There was no actual destination, life was unfolding around me as I thought about it.

To me, the key features of a journey are the things that happen along the way. A journey in my mind has no need of a final end point, it continues on for as long as you let it. It's not a trip, or a visit or an outing - it's a journey, alluding that the path is greater than the destination. When we journey through the first three dimensions, it is easy to stand still in one place and assume a destination has been reached, but it would be sad to think that nothing had happened along the way. So now, as we all journey through the fourth dimension, do we ever reach a place where we might stand still in time? This constant movement is for me the essence of life. My greatest fear is standing still while the current washes around me, and watching the world go past. The journey is in fact all there is. It's no wonder that we're suddenly so pre-occupied with the word. Travel, movement, change, new thoughts, new ideas, new activities, they're all a part of the journey.

If we're constantly traveling, how can we ignore the journey? One of life's great lessons is to stop and smell the roses, to appreciate the moments as you find them, rather than dismissing them in favour of the next - living in the moment. Perhaps that is the key to it after all, if we think about the journey, where we have come from, to where we are, and pay attention to all of its parts we allow ourselves to appreciate the importance and beauty of each moment.

So despite journey being the new word of the decade, I'm sticking with it. I'm along for the ride and I'm not getting off - this journey has no destination, and I think that's what makes it the most exciting.

Deadlines seem to you to be of relative, rather than absolute, importance

The title of this post was one of many questions in myers briggs type personality test I saw recently. Ironically, without hesitation I answered yes. To the frustration of many people in my life, I'm not exactly what you'd call punctual. That would be one of the many reasons that I'm writing a "wrap-up of 2009, start again 2010" type blog post 2 weeks into the new year.

For three years in a row I made the same New Years resolutions without managing to ever keep one of them. The first was to lose 5kg (actually I think that had been a standing resolution since I was about 15, when I didn't actually need to lose 5kg). The second was to learn to speak Italian (which I did attempt one of the years). The third was to finish my PhD. So after 3 years of consistently failing, in 2009 I thought it was time to mix things up again. I abandoned all other resolutions, and summed it all up with one statement. "to not to do anything that I don't want someone* to find out about". As it went, there were only 2 incidents where I slipped up, and since they're things I don't want someone to find out about, I won't mention what they were here. Overall, I think 2 slip-ups in 365 days, counts as a success.

So 2010, and the semi-pointless task of thinking up new resolutions is back. Given my penchant for repeating resolutions it's not surprising that I've decided to maintain the same resolution this year. I think once I manage to keep it for 3 years in a row, I might just call it my life motto, although that being the case, it's going to need to be phrased a little better.

*excluding speed cameras and law enforcement officers