Are We Nearing the End?
One of our striving saints and playground heaven friends sent me an article he had written a while back. I’ve been looking for the right moment to share it with all of you. Now seems like that time given that we are hopefully nearing the end of our quarantine journey.
Steve Dickinson is an engineer by training who, following a successful corporate career, ran his own consulting business for 24 years prior to his retirement in 2014. He is a recognized expert in organizational strategy, planning, and execution with an emphasis in customer focused process improvement.
His business objectives were to; (1) help people, (2) have fun, and (3) make enough money to continue doing 1&2. He continues to focus on the first two in retirement, and his energy and enthusiasm for doing so are unmatched in my experience.
![IMG_0146[1]](https://saintbuilder.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/img_01461.jpg?w=154&h=206)
He and his spouse Helen have traveled most of the country in their RV in addition to visiting many countries around the world. They volunteer with their church, tend to a sizable garden, and enjoy outdoor activities including kayaking, biking, and fishing when they are at their home in Florida.
I could go on about his many accomplishments, talents, and interests, but without further ado, take it away Steve…
It’s the Journey. Authored by Steve Dickinson
Have you ever known something but not know it? Like deep down you knew, but you weren’t aware of it? As I read Scott Froyen’s book Playground Heaven, I had a sudden realization. I wrote about it to capture my thoughts and to share it with you. Here goes….
All throughout our lives we are faced with what I will call “Ends.” By Ends, I mean that almost all of our activities have some sort of an End, often with an objective attached. Some objectives are serious, like deadlines for projects at work. Others are assumed, like getting to our destination when we travel.
Recently my wife Helen and I took a trip to Charlotte, North Carolina to see “The Real Christmas Story” at one of our favorite theaters, Narroway Productions. It’s about an 8-hour drive from our home. Normally we would load up our luggage and take off early in the morning to be sure we got there in time, to reach our End in one long day. With the End mindset, the key to planning is to focus on the destination.
While this has made sense to me for 30 years or so, I think there is something missing. Don’t get me wrong, it is important to know what the End will be when doing something important, such as an important project, or traveling to a specific city for a specific reason.
So, what is missing? The Journey, how we get to the End. At times, the Journey can be much more important to achieving the Halo High, as described by Scott in his book, than the End itself. Let me first define the term Journey.
The Journey is all the activities that take place between the start of an event and the End. This includes choosing the event, the planning, the travel itself, the activities, places, and any other things that take place between the start and the End. If it happened after the start and before the End, it happened during the Journey.
Allow me to give you a few real-life examples.
Take our trip to Charlotte. In the past we had made it a one-day trip. This time we decided to take an extra day and spend a night in Savannah, Georgia on the way. We have been to Savannah several times, but each of those times it was an End. This time it was part of the Journey.
On departure day, instead of having to get up early and rush out the door for an 8-hour drive, we slept in, leisurely packed and headed out for our brief 4-hour road trip. We got into Savannah in the early afternoon, well rested and ready to enjoy the city.
We stayed downtown on the waterfront where we could walk to wherever we wanted to go. We did a little shopping, walked to dinner, sat on a bench by the river, watched the freighters go by, and simply enjoyed the evening. In the morning we had a nice breakfast at a French Café, leisurely packed up, and drove the remaining 4 hours to Charlotte.
My intent here is not to fully describe the trip to Savannah, but instead to make the point that hit me like a ton of bricks while reading Scott’s book. In this case the Journey ended up being just as fun, or maybe even more fun, than the End we had planned. As we think back on the trip, what we talk about most is the stop on the Journey, not the End.
Another example. During my consulting years a typical week was getting on a plane Sunday afternoon, working long weekdays, flying back home on Friday, and spending Saturday planning for the next trip. Then back to the airport again … a seemingly endless journey that lasted decades. Then about 13 years ago we bought a camper, an RV. We began using the RV as a home when I had jobs that would keep me in one place for a while.
In one memorable RV business trip we drove from Florida to Phoenix, Arizona, almost exactly 2000 miles away. I worked for two weeks, coming “home” every night to Helen, and her fabulous home cooked meals! Then we took two weeks off to tour southern Arizona, visiting a few state parks and spending almost a week in Tucson. And then back to Phoenix for two more consulting weeks prior to heading home. It was a great Journey. I don’t remember much about the work, but we sure remember the Journey.
Ever since I began planning our summer RV trips for the Journey instead of the End, they have been much more relaxing, enjoyable, and memorable. We take time to explore the local towns and sights, and by doing so we have discovered things we did not know existed, such as South Dakota’s Corn Palace. We found it by accident, by exploring on our Journey to our End destination. It’s worth a look on the net, and a visit if you can.
You may be saying, “But I don’t travel like that, how does this apply to me?” I remember that as a child, mowing the yard was an End I was tasked with accomplishing. I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time, but to make the Journey fun I made a game out of it, mowing little squares, comparing how long it took for each, and assessing the degree of difficulty each required.
How about walking to school? Yes we walked to school, no not uphill both ways, but we made all kinds of games up to pass the time, to enjoy the Journey. We’d take different routes, throw buckeyes (I’m from Ohio) at each other, and race to see who could get to a spot first. We even stopped one day and damned up the local creek, got home in solid mud, and thus our name was mud! But it was fun, we were on a Halo High. I remember these Journeys vividly to this day, some 60 years later.
Last and most important story. Three days ago my father passed away. It fell upon me to help my sister reconcile his estate. Not an easy task. In this grieving process, it finally dawned on me that his life was over. The “End” had come for him. There will be no more activities for him to participate in, at least not on this earth. That got me thinking.
Now at the “End” and looking back, what really matters, what is it that the family sits and talks about? What was it that we talked with him about as he awaited the eventual “End”? Did we talk about goals? Did we talk about milestones? Did we talk about wealth? No, we talked about the Journey. The Journey we had lived together as a family. We talked about the good times, the things he had taught us, the things we used to do that we would miss dearly.
In closing, let me ask you a few Journey enjoyment related questions:
- When you drive to work what do you do to make the time more enjoyable? Music, motivational speakers, allowing yourself time to stop for a coffee, getting to work early so you can relax a little before getting started, taking a different route to change up the scenery?
- What do you do when you cook or do other work in the kitchen? Watch a little TV, music, maybe a nice beverage, allow yourself plenty of time so you don’t stress? Is the last dish you put into the dishwasher your beverage glass?
- Is all your time spent on the computer trying to get to the End of your email and other responsibilities? Do you promise yourself just a little time for pleasure? For example, I commit myself to one game of Free Cell every time I sit down at the computer. Average time to complete one game is about 2 minutes. Not a huge commitment, but a little fun on the Journey. And when I get a game done in under 1 minute I have a brief shot of the Halo High.
- How do you plan your weekends? Do you plan only the Ends, or do you also plan some Journey time as well?
- When you are traveling, do you leave enough time to tell the spouse and kids that if they see anything interesting that they’d like to stop for, they can just say so, and you’ll stop and check it out? We have found some wonderful things this way.
- How do you incorporate those that are important to you in this Journey called life?
There are Endless examples of the need to enjoy the Journey and not just the End. Give Journey thinking a try, you will like it. You just might find your Halo High along the way.
The Saint Builder Foundation 