What Happens Along the Way
Christmas 2022.
My husband and I decided to head south for Christmas week seeking sunshine and warm temperatures. We found a wonderful beach front condo at (bonus!) off-season prices. It was clean, quiet, and best of all, you could see – and hear - the ocean from the balcony. This also meant you could see the sunrise. I promised myself I would see all seven of them – a pretty easy promise to make when you’re headed to a southern beach even if it is December.
Only one thing stood in the way of my keeping that promise. The blustery cold and ice hitting the mid-Atlantic made its presence known even in South Carolina. At 5:30 am Christmas Eve morning, the temperatures hovered around 20 degrees.
Did I still sit on the balcony watching the sunrise? Actually, yes.
But it really wasn’t the promise I had made to myself that kept me undeterred. It was the desire I had to see the sunrise over the ocean even if the sun itself was chattering its teeth.
And so, hot coffee in hand, and enough layers of coat, scarf, gloves, and blanket to climb Mt. Everest, I shuffled out and settled in to watch.
It was worth every ounce of effort.
You see, I had arrived on the balcony an hour and a half before the official sunrise. This meant I got to watch as glorious layers of color – yellows, fuscias and shades of orange – slowly rose above the horizon. I labelled it, “pre-sunrise.” I saw the most beauty as I sat waiting for the actual event of sunrise.
What would I have missed if I had said …
It’s too cold.
I have the rest of the week – it’ll get warmer.
I’ll get up in time for the actual sunrise.
The answer is, I would have missed the most beautiful part – the moments just before the round sphere of the sun is visible to the eye.
In life, when you wait for, look forward to, and allow joy only when the big “event” arrives, you miss out on what happens along the way. Maybe you don’t even try because the wait and the work are “too hard” or you think you’ll never get “there.”
But there are lessons along the way – some of which you need to learn in order to get to the big finale. There are small successes to celebrate. And there is always joy in the journey when you’re willing to find it.
Shift your perspective to seeing all your journey has to teach you.
The sunrise will come soon enough.