(HOST) It’s the season of commencement addresses. And commentator Peter Gilbert, the executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council, offers some advice for graduating students – and all of us – about the difference between goal-setting and the process of getting to that goal.
(GILBERT) Students often graduate from high school or college with new goals – things they want to achieve as they "commence" the next chapter in their lives. We set short-term goals and long-term goals – accomplishing something important, doing good work, gaining fame, perhaps, or fortune.
The problem is, what then? What do we do when we achieve our goals, when we meet with the success that we’ve sought for so long? Do we ask, "What now?" "Is that all there is?" To put it another way, what would the dog do if it ever actually caught the car it chased so passionately?
Life is about the journey, not the end. We forget that, as Mathew Arnold wrote, "Life is not in having and getting, but in being and becoming." It’s so easy to forget that life is what we are doing now.
Life doesn’t start some place down the road, after we’re "all set," whatever that means. Is it only then, when we are all set (an ever elusive goal if there ever was one), that we begin to enjoy the journey itself, to focus on the present, to begin to act the way we know we should, to start giving back or sharing with others?
One of my favorite poems is entitled "Ithaca," by the great modern Greek poet Constatine Cavafy. In Homer’s "Odyssey", the hero, Odysseus spends ten years trying to get back home to Ithaca after fighting at Troy. But things keep blowing him off course, delaying his return. Ithaca was his desired destination, but Cavafy’s poem surprises us by celebrating the journey itself. Cavafy writes,
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
He concludes his poem this way:
Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for long years; and anchor at the isle
when you are old, rich with all you have gained on the way, not
expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have
understood what Ithaca means.
So that’s the challenge – to set and pursue goals, but not mistake the end for the be-all and end-all. Because to do that would be to risk approaching the end of one’s life – even a successful life – only to realize, to one’s sorrow, that one didn’t pay enough attention to the journey – or its meaning.