I Am the Journey

Today Bonnie Hunter shared a phrase she kept seeing on the bottom of a travel poster in her hotel on a recent trip to Bali--You Are the Journey. As she said, the journey doesn't happen without you, so really, you are the journey.

It reminds me of a similar quote that I read back in high school--something like, "It's the journey that counts, not the destination." You know, take time to smell the roses, go with the flow.

When I took knitting lessons a couple years ago, when I had to "un-knit" mistakes, my teacher would always volunteer to remove the offending stitches for me. Mistakes were usually discovered many rows after they happened, and most students were dismayed at the thought of all the time lost undoing and redoing the stitches. They were always surprised when I happily did the "un-knitting" and re-knitting myself.To me, it was all part of the fun of handling the yarn and manipulating it and watching what it would do--all part of the journey I was enjoying.

The same applies to my quilting. Who likes to rip seams, remove stitches to separate parts painstakingly stitched together. It seems like you are not moving forward at the point, just losing time, but really it's a chance to let your mind wander a bit while you do something a bit less technical, a chance for your subconscious to review the plan for the quilt or mentally practice how to make it go right the next time you stitch, imagine the colors you chose all together. And really, it's all fun with yarn and needles, or fabric, thread, needle and machine.

It's too bad we usually seem to have deadlines so that we cannot just let it be about the journey/process. If I just had a succession of finished quilts, well I don't see that as fun--why not just buy them? I like thinking about the possibilities with this one fabric or color. I like thinking about the possibilities with this one block or layout. I like the actual measuring, cutting, aligning and stitching and watching it evolve. That I end up with a beautiful, useful quilt at the end is a bonus. All the time that brought me to that finished quilt--that's the part I like, the entire journey.

I AM THE JOURNEY.

Now if I could just apply more of that zen coolness into the rest of my life......