I have recently had a number of people - clients, friends, colleagues - talk to me about being happy when they get "there" or acknowledging that they aren't "there" yet. Whenever I hear this I am curious about where "there" is? Is there some "there" to which we are all striving? Some endpoint which we hope to achieve?

I know I can fall into the trap of thinking that when I have worked hard enough, studied enough, read the right books, then I will be "done." Somewhere in my mind I at times think there is an endpoint to this journey and when I get "there" I will be happy, peaceful, fulfilled, and content.

Deep down, I know better. Life and growth is a journey for which there is no endpoint.

I came upon the following passage this morning in the book, The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham:

In seeing life as a pilgrimage, the vision that is spirituality's open-endedness recognizes that it is not how far one has come that is significant, but how far one has to go....The pilgrimage image suggests that the goal of this particular journey known as life is not to prove that we are perfect but to find some happiness, some joyful peace of mind in the reality of our own imperfection. Rather than thinking, "If I'm not farther along that I was yesterday, somethings wrong with me,"the pilgrim thinks, "I'm in a different place from where I was yesterday, and isn't this interesting?" In this realization, in this kind of looking forward from where you are (no matter where that happens to be), resides the classic virtue of hope. Hope is born while facing the unknown and discovering that one is not alone.