“While traveling along the road of life, enjoy the going and stop thinking so fiercely about getting there.” –Anonymous
Sometimes a vacation journey, such as a family trip to Disney World, focuses mostly on the destination. At other times, our primary motive is to travel through beautiful scenic areas where we have no specific destination in mind. Our goal on these trips is to enjoy each and every mile of the journey to the utmost. We are in no rush to get to any specific place, because the entire route is so picturesque that we want to take everything in along the way. Our journey through life should be a combination of these two goals. We do want to get someplace during our journey through life and we need goals in order to give our lives direction, but we also want to enjoy every mile of the trip.
Each day is a new chapter in our lives and marks the “first day of the rest of our lives.” If we focus on living each day to the fullest, both in terms of finding joy for ourselves and in doing what we can to bring sunshine to the lives of others, all our days added together will represent quite an accomplishment and quite a contribution to our fellow human beings. We will meet many fellow travelers as we follow the road of life. Some of them will be so busy or obsessed with their long-term goals that they will not be willing to give us the time of day, but we can bid them a pleasant journey anyway. Others will be very loving and caring, and will be concentrating on their journey a lot more than on any long-term destination. We must decide as we travel along which type of person we want to be. Do we want to race forward toward some distant goal, or do we want to travel at a slower pace and enjoy the scenery every mile of the way?
Neither of these approaches to life is necessarily better than the other. We can’t tell other people how to live their lives. Some people soar to the heights of success by focusing on the destination, while many others who focus heavily on their goals fail to see their dreams come true. Those who travel at a slower pace along the highway of life, and who are always willing to help others, may not achieve either fortune or fame, but in many instances, they may accomplish a lot more and have a far more pleasurable trip.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2026
Allen W. Smith
