Most of us love to go on vacations. We plan for days together about where to go. We choose our destination based on our interests, the company we are likely to have and the time we have for our holiday.

However, we forget one simple rule of life. We focus so much on the destination that we forget the journey. We do all the research to find out everything about the place we plan to visit. The places to visit, the weather, which may help us to plan the clothes we need to take. We also plan the people we have to meet at our destination.

In this whole process for planning our holiday, we forget that there will so much to do on the way to our destination. Imagine you going on a holiday in a car with family and friends. In my view, the journey is more joyful than the destination. We focus so much on the goal that we forget to enjoy the journey.

Life is no different. Each of us have a lot of goals in life. We have a lot of ambitions. We meticulously plan to reach all our life goals. But most of the times we do not end up enjoying the journey to our destination. For eg. One of our goals may be to graduate from a prestigious university in a beautiful state. We focus so much on our academics that we do not have time to see places in that beautiful city. We do not have time to admire nature or meet wonderful people around the university.

This is so true almost in every aspect of our lives. We resolve to go for a morning walk every day to the park. Our goal is to keep fit and maintain good health. This is laudable. But while we are walking 5 kms a day in a beautiful park, we don’t enjoy the green trees, wild flowers, the singing birds or the blue sky above us.

Then as we get ready to go to work or college, we are running against time. Even if we are taking a public transport, we have so much to enjoy along with way before we reach our destination. We close our eyes and miss to see the world around us. We may get opportunities to meet nice people along the way. We may observe good Samaritans around us serving society and so on.

At work, our focus is on target to achieve for the day. There is nothing wrong with that goal. But we fail to wish people around us. We do not remember to wish a dear colleague on her birthday. We may even find it difficult to find time to have a healthy lunch break.

In our social life, we are not different. We neither remember festivals and occasion to celebrate with family and friends nor remember to wish them even if we are at home on a festival holiday. We think sending and receiving messages on social media the best past time in life. We do realise that social media does not convey emotions. We do.

Imagine missing a sight like in the photo above and not pausing your journey to admire this beauty as in the photo above.

It is time to wake up and enjoy the journey as much as the destination. We all are born on a pre determined date and possible our return date to heaven is also fixed. The time in between these two dates is at our discretion. This is the journey we need to enjoy as life. We should not spend our life worrying about the ultimate date. After all, all of us have to go some day. Some go earlier while others may go later.

Time to enjoy the journey is now.

S Ramesh Shankar

22nd November 2018