That’s My Destination

Read Time: 8 minutes

Going Nowhere

I spent the first couple of years after high school thinking that I was supposed to live focused on a destination. Where I’m headed should be my number one priority. When I arrived, what I found at that destination would show me how to get to the next one. I thought I needed to learn to live ambitiously. Setting goals that I could either reach or forget about (failure without acknowledging it?) with new goals already taking their place.  

But, where did I actually end up going? If I’m honest, I never really went anywhere. I finally realized that I never learned anything about life or myself while reaching for goals believing that the next destination would be the answer. I only ended up fixed on a destination. I never looked around or beyond it. Ambition got me hyper focused on one thing at the expense of everything else.

I don’t think an ambitious life is for me. I don’t really get the point. Goals are great. It feels good to set them and it feels good to achieve them. They give good adrenaline. When I reach a goal, I feel a rush of pride and a temporary spike in my happiness that is very satisfying. The problem, though, is that I spent so much time planning these goals and the next one and the next that I lost sight of what the point was. I lost sight of whether this goal was what I wanted. Was it even worth all the effort? For what and for who?

Here’s how it went. I should graduate from high school so I can go to college. I should go to college so I can get a good job. I should get a good job so I can have money to buy things and do “stuff”. I should get the good job so I can meet the guy. I should meet the guy so we can… well, I never got further than this. You’re getting the picture, right? 

What was the actual destination? Where was I going? I assumed I would know it when I found it or someone would tell me. Then, I woke up to the reality that if I didn’t stop manufacturing the goals I believed would get me “there”, I would “wake up” nowhere wondering where all the time went.

This manufactured life of goal setting created a level of anxiety in me that is hard to explain. I didn’t understand for a long time why it didn’t ever click. I started to wonder if people live their lives like this for most of it believing that the next goal is the one that will finally get them there. That it will all be worth it someday. It’s a very restless and complex feeling that I finally made myself face. This wasn’t working. This wasn’t going to work. What my life was supposed to be just wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

Worried Again

Most of this blog is about my life as I have lived and as it is being lived. It includes actual travel destinations and all that goes with these experiences. Where my whole life is really going, though, is simply not something I will ever write about. I don’t know where it’s going. I actually wonder how people think that they can know. Life just doesn’t quite work like that. Thinking that I know or can know where my goals will actually take me limits where I can go. The worry that came with needing to know is simply not worth it.

I used to do this whole routine with worrying. I would worry, it would resolve or get more complicated, then I would find another worry and start moving into it. I tried to avoid other worries with new ones. Sometimes they would pile up for no real reason. Then, literally one day at one moment, I decided to stop. Just stop. Not slow down and think about it, but to just not do that worrying thing anymore. 

Stopping has changed everything. Not just the worrying, but also the way I handle things that I want to accomplish. None of it seems overwhelming anymore. Nothing seems like something I shouldn’t want for myself because someone else can do it better. It all seems possible. All of the things I want, all of the dreams, and every passion. I feel the clouds around me, but I’m not living there. I have dreams, but I’m not living in one. It’s a beautiful open space.

I finally saw the way this goal and worry pattern would always play out. When I worried about the next destination and usually the one after that, I was only living my life on the way to it. I wasn’t letting myself enjoy being in any of the amazing destinations that my life was offering me. I can only live fully by knowing what I want and not focusing only on where my life might go. Most of the time, it won’t go where I think it should. So, I focus on what I want now and don’t worry about what happens next.

Ironically, and beautifully, I’m traveling to a lot of actual destinations right now. I don’t think that I would be doing any of this if I was worrying about or striving for each step of a life I thought I should chase after. Worry, and even fearful anticipation, made me second guess myself a lot. It slowed me down and made me indecisive. I was anxious about how I would handle circumstances that hadn’t happened yet. I worried about what people might think of me and if everything would be “okay”. I thought a lot about the future and spent time fantasizing about how great it could be as I sacrificed today for tomorrow.

Many people believe in fantasizing and positively manifesting outcomes. I don’t. I have discovered that for me, this often set me up for disappointment and set expectations that were not realistic. Maybe I wasn’t living in the manifesting world correctly. I don’t know. But, a life of believing that I can think things into reality just doesn’t seem to work out. It felt like another kind of worrying. I just kept anxiously waiting for that reality to happen. It never did, but a lot of awesome opportunities came and went while I waited.

Oh, the Places I Will Go

Here’s what happened when I just didn’t think too much, plan, fantasize, or worry about whatever the next thing was. It was all okay. I handled things fine. Better than fine, actually. What people thought about me never seemed to make a difference. Either I never knew their thoughts, or I just didn’t care. 

Most importantly, when I purposefully started living in experiences, I didn’t need that next thing to be even better. I wasn’t missing the one in front of me. I was able to be present in it and feel the joy of it. I started learning about people and the world in a much bigger way. I’m aware that I’m living how I want to live. Once in a lifetime stuff can happen a lot when my life is lived in the destination I’m already in.

The places I take my life are important. That’s why I don’t want to be worried about or jump into the next thing without realizing where I am and what I’m learning. I’m not saving my worries for tomorrow, either. I get that this way of living can sound like avoidance. But, what am I avoiding? Someone else’s way to live? Settling down? I’ll probably slow down several times in my life, but I really don’t see myself settling down. 

I’m not even sure what settling down means. It sounds like there’s supposed to be a point when I’ve reached all of the destinations I will want or will be allowed to reach. Like somehow the universe only allows each of us a finite number. Not in my life. There are an infinite number of destinations I can choose from. The only limit is time. I want them all to be possible.

I’m enjoying a place where I’m not dwelling in or running from my life. Stuff is absolutely going to happen that I’ll have to deal with. It always does. But, I don’t have to “what if” life to excruciating exhaustion keeping myself from the “why not?” I don’t have to do it all alone, either. When I took stuff on to prove I could “adult” all by myself, I just hurt myself with effort that went nowhere. As humans, we naturally want to be there for each other, and I have amazing humans in all my destinations (Check out “That’s My Squad”). 

All the destinations I arrive at in my life are beautiful in their own unique way. Even when they are terrible. Each one teaches me something unique that I take with me. None of them are just a way to the next. When they are, I know that I’m using people and marginalizing myself by not seeing what life is giving me. I never want to forget that each destination shows me something new. I don’t need to know where I’m going next. It doesn’t matter. I already know that it will be beautiful there. 

Want to go too?