Journey or Destination?

It's one of those perennial questions that comes back to haunt us at least on a couple of occasions, isn't it? What's more important the journey or the destination? It's also one of those questions that I have struggled to answer. The idealist in me says no doubt it is the journey that is more important, and the practical person that resides in me at times says, no yaa it's the destination that counts for just as much if not more. So here I am caught b/w these two alter egos of mine trying to answer a question, which I am sure many have tried to do with varying degrees of success.

Let me side with my idealist(ic?) twin first. Being in grad school I've been asked, what will my first pay cheque look like, far too often for my liking. And the reason I am mentioning this is b'coz that is where the origin of the larger question I am trying to answer lies. Take a minute to think...why am I or for that matter why does anyone go to grad school? For the majority, the answer is to acquire knowledge, to gain a better understanding of what we want to do with our lives and to a certain extent to give a proper direction to our lives. So if we are here to acquire knowledge why should we preoccupy ourselves by thinking of the end product, if you will. Isn't that something that will happen in due course of time? Way too often I have spent time thinking about the grades that I want to get and how to get them. Now instead of thinking about what grades I want, had I spent that time in studying for the grades, wouldn't the grades have taken care of themselves? Speaking about my own profession, genetic counseling...what happens in a session when I am with a patient is a result of what has happened much before I see the patient actually. It is the result of the hard work of preparing for the case, all those role-plays that I hated doing, the numerous times I have 'played' the session in my brain. So instead of putting in effort here had I been preoccupied in thinking about how my session would go, would I be a good enough genetic counselor? Being a sports fan, I always like thinking about examples from sport, especially cricket. Say before any series if a batsman sets a goal of scoring 'x' number of hundreds or 'y' number of runs, doesn't he then get preoccupied by these figures, rather than saying, " Ok let me bat to the best of my ability and the runs will come". I mean what we see in a cricket match is just the end product of all those training session, the net practice and everything else that cricketers do isn't it? So what becomes more important here, the result or the preparation; the destination or the journey?

Ahem...now my practical twin is speaking. Sure the journey is important no doubt, but what does this journey count for, if at the end there is nothing to show? In corporate world especially, does the argument that my idealistic twin put forth still stand? Or in a world where the profit that you make is all that counts, the way you get there becomes immaterial? Perhaps this would lead to an entirely different argument...an argument which can go on and on about the six letter word, which most of us are forgetting. and a word which most people in the corporate world are ready to bury...ETHICS. If I am a businessman, what should I be concentrating on, my turnover or whether people in my organization are enjoying their 'journey' in the corporate life? In cricket in the end what are you recognized by, the number of runs you scored in a series or whether you 'learned' a lot in the series? Perhaps in your first series people will look at how much you learned or improved, but when you call it a day what gets published, the number of runs you scored, the number of wickets you took, the number of matches you won...right.

And so after hoping to come to a conclusion, I am still just as confused, if not more confused about the question I was trying to answer! But for still making a transition from a student to a professional I will stick my neck out and say it is the journey that is more important then the destination :)