Life is not a destination, but a journey

There is a story about a man who dies and goes to Heaven, and he is granted every wish he could ever imagine. On day one he said, ‘I want a Porsche’ and within a second he was speeding along a coastal road in his new luxury car, roof down. 

Day 2 he said, ‘I want a beautiful house’ and there it was - a mansion with a glistening swimming pool. 

Day 3, ‘I want to be rich beyond my wildest dreams’, and his bank balance grew by an unimaginable amount…

By day 100 he had everything he could possibly want, and his wishes became small and insignificant ‘I would like another teapot, the one I got yesterday is now too old’.

And he looked around, slumped on the ground, and realised he was deeply bored and depressed. 

‘God,’ he said, ‘I can’t stand Heaven, please take me to Hell’. And God said: ‘You are already in Hell.’ Getting what we want isn’t always what we want, and when things go ‘wrong’ for us, it doesn’t always need to be bad. 

For me, the last 12 months an awful lot has gone ‘wrong’.  Divorce, moving my mum into a care home and to top it all I broke my arm a few months back! Nice, but I’m not after sympathy. 

These ‘bad things’, these things that upset our path, break our dreams, change our futures, are all part of life.

Accepting them, learning from them, even crying and being sad by them, is also part of life.

But life also throws at us unexpected joys. New friends, new places, new experiences. And sometimes these come from the very places where the ‘bad’ things started. This is part of life too.

Life is not a destination, but a journey. And recognising and appreciating every twist and turn is what it is all about.

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