In the striving for achievement of any sort, the journey  itself can become a practice that deepens our connection to life. The following excerpt reminds me of the wonders available for us if we stop long enough to notice the mysteries that show up along the way.

“…Everything about us is paradox. One who strives and conquers grows soft. The magnanimous person grown rich becomes mean. The creative artist for whom everything is made easy nods. Every doctrine swears that it can breed humans, but none can tell in advance what sort of person it will breed. We are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming—a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery, we remembered even the misery with tenderness. All of us, on seeing old friends again, have remembered with happiness the trials we lived through with those friends. Of what can we be certain except this—that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances.”

—from Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint Exupery, translated by Louis Galantiere

 

“Something fundamental changes when people begin to ask questions together. The questions create more of a learning conversation than the normal stale debate about problems.”

– Mike Szymanczyk, Chairman and CEO, The Altria Group.

My friends David Isaacs and Juanita Brown, co-founders of the World Cafe, shared an article with me entitled Conversational Leadership: Thinking together for a Change by Thomas Hurley and Juanita Brown. In it, I found the above quote.

In reflection, the pieces that jump out at me are:  asking questions together rather than alone and creating learning conversations instead of debates about problems. The key for me are “questions” versus of answers and cultivating learning versus the old paradigm of being split between what’s right and what’s wrong.

One of the things that I notice about society is that people are in a rush to accomplish things. This happens because a good number of people think that accomplishing things will get them worthiness. For example, “I want to earn such and such diploma, I want to earn X amount of money, I want to be ‘the voice’ for this body of work, or I want to be in a relationship now!”

This kind of mentality is based on meeting the external expectations that have been placed on us (or that we’ve bought into for our self worth). When you think about it, it’s all about achieving something.  The majority of people in our communities go through this. Its not that it is bad. It is actually normal to want to accomplish and move forward in our lives. The problem is that we become overly attached to the accomplishing, forgetting that we need to breath and reflect through the process.

We would benefit from asking ourselves through the journey how are we doing.  What am I experiencing through the journey? What am I learning? Where are my edges?  Where do I feel out of my comfort zone? Who are the people that I want to be with? All of that is really the process of life. We can not get away from it.

In this moment of my life, I know more about what I want than ever and at the same time I am still a great student. I am still inquiring into the mystery of life.