The Secret of the Mountain

Neil Gaiman once gave a speech to a bunch of graduating college seniors in which he referred to his career as a mountain. And what I really liked about the metaphor was that, though the mountain represented his goals, Gaiman’s encouragement came as he described his journey. The journey was his career. And by all indications (and I think Gaiman himself might agree with this), that journey is still happening. The mountain is still there, but he may never actually reach it.

At first blush, that sounds terrible, doesn't it? “Set your goal, but know that you may never reach it.” What, then, is the point of the goal? Why dream, why put yourself on the path to something, if you may not get there?

That’s the thing… there’s a problem in your thinking.

Dreams are easy. Everyone has one. It may or may not be grand and sparkling. Your dream may be to have a lovely family, a comfortable house, and a job that pays a good wage without demanding too much from your life. That’s an honorable dream.

Goals are harder. Goals are dreams with deadlines, they say. “I want to achieve X by Y Date.” That’s pretty solid. And once you know your goal, you can start sussing out exactly what it takes to get there. But when you get there… then what?

If your goal was “have $10 million in the bank by the time I’m 50,” and you don’t meet that goal, then are you a failure? If you do meet that goal, where do you go from there? All that work and effort and heart and energy you put into the goal got you exactly what you wanted but… now what?

That’s usually the point at which people feel depressed. They go into a mid-life crisis mode, or they start casting around for some other target for their lives, latching on to whatever they find, chasing the high of accomplishment yet again.

I think we’re all missing the point, though.

Because the secret of the mountain is this: We should never reach the mountain.

The journey is the point. The purpose is our destination. And it should be a land so expansive and so vast that we spend our lives navigating and exploring it.

A mountain at a distance is awe inspiring and majestic. But a mountain up close becomes mundane. It’s just dirt and rock now.

The inspiration comes from seeing it on the horizon. And the growth we have comes from navigating the path toward it. We will always be happier and better off, we will always be more, for the journey we take.

So if you’re finding yourself frustrated that you can see your mountain clearly but you just can’t get there, stop. Pause. Take a breath. And take in the view. Choose the next waypoint on your journey, and enjoy the walk. The mountain will always be there. But the path you take is where all the life is.

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