The Paradox of Arrival

Life’s greatest paradox might be that our pursuit of destinations—career, relationship, or personal goals—blinds us to a fundamental truth: there is no final arrival point in life. Each destination is a way-station on an endless journey of becoming. Meaning isn’t in reaching goals, but in our growth and change during the pursuit.

I’ve experienced this numerous times in my career. I look forward to the next promotion, and when it arrives, I’m immediately thinking about what’s next. A good name for this is the “arrival fallacy.”

This obsession is everywhere in our society. It’s in careers, success, marriage, and wealth. Social media amplifies this illusion by inundating us with reminders of others’ milestones.

Recently, I’ve become aware of this predicament due to my exploration in meditation and mindfulness. This arrival fallacy is the mind’s default mode. Without intentional mindfulness, we immediately think about what will make us happy, usually involving the next step on our journey.

I need to reorient my life and shift from destination-focused to journey-oriented thinking, having experienced the arrival fallacy in my life. This won’t be easy, because our default state is to daydream about what comes next.

Pioneers have paved the path away from this arrival fallacy. A great example of shifting the focus from perfection to daily incremental improvements is Toyota’s “Kaizen” approach to continuous improvement. Similarly, Anne Lamott advocates for “bird by bird”—finding joy and fulfillment in the small steps of the creative process rather than fixating on the final product.

The challenge before us is not to abandon goals, but to shift how we think about them. Instead of viewing life as a series of finish lines, we can celebrate continuous small wins, find joy in our craft, and regularly ask ourselves not “What’s next?” but “What did I learn from that experience?”

The most powerful step is acknowledging that there is no finish line. Embracing the journey as the destination opens us to curiosity and wonder and frees us from the cycle of anticipation and disappointment. The question isn’t whether we’ll cross the finish line, but how we choose to travel there.