Finding joy in the journey

When I started taking piano lessons, my friend Dave Lunn (who happens to be the instrumental music director at my school) gave me some priceless words of wisdom.  He told me I should find joy in the journey and enjoy the learning process.  Thankfully, I heeded his advice, and I really have loved every minute of practice and lessons.  Granted, the journey has been brief and not too challenging but definitely joyous!
I have always been a "destination person"...the journey is the means to an end.  I like to plan ahead and set goals and reach the goals.  I have to consciously think about enjoying the process of learning or traveling or working on something.  I just want to reach the goal successfully!  So many times in my school years, I focused on learning/memorizing something for a test, but I did not enjoy the learning enough to actually remember any of the things that I so diligently studied. I wish I had realized how important it was to find joy in the journey of learning.  And I hope I can teach that to my students and my son.
Life is a journey.  As I ponder this statement, I realize that the moment in which my life ends won't really matter, it will be all the moments that made up my entire life time that are important.  The "destination" of my life here on earth is not nearly as significant as the way in which it was lived and the lives that I encountered on the trail.  There have been many significant moments as I hike along the path of my life; memories that I will carry with me forever...some that I intended to remember and some that caused such deep feelings that I couldn't help but remember.  Graduations, our wedding, Christopher's birth, and many of the milestones of Christopher's life are all deeply etched in my heart along with memories from my cancer journey.  Those have been the defining moments...the moments that made me who I am, but certainly not destinations...not ending points in my life.  They are new beginnings!
There will always be a part of me that is heading for the destination...looking for the goal.  But, I think I'm going to try being a "journey person" for a while...I might actually like it!