The Light at the End of the…Tunnel Vision
I originally wanted to do a photo similar to this after watching the Robin Williams movie, What Dreams May Come. I’ll admit that this is not exactly what I envisioned, but I can still try again someday…this is the tunnel I was in, so it seemed fitting to make it the tunnel I worked with.
I was impatiently flipping through radio stations while I was driving… (Hands-free, of course…)
when I landed on … W IDK..
What I heard struck a chord because I have heard it in various forms quite often over the past year or two.
This is not a direct quote, but the writer being interviewed said something to this effect,
“Too often we set our sights on the end, the result, the prize, and we lose sight of the fact that the “process” is really what it’s all about.”
My interpretation of that was…
The light at the end, though a worthy goal, is possibly less important than the method…the toil…the struggle…the accomplishment…of getting there.
So, does that mean the end DOESN’T justify the means, but vice versa?
Sure, we need the light to provide inspiration and forward movement, but it’s the journey that matters, because the light will always be in the future…something ahead…
And the future never exists, in reality.
The ‘now’ of the task to move towards the light is all that we really hold onto…until the next step.
A step that leads us closer, or returns us to another starting point, with, hopefully a better game plan….or allows us to throw away recycle the old game plan …
At what point in Life do we start forgetting the important things?
Or,
when do we shift our focus from the now…to the end of the tunnel.
I suppose it is different for each of us.
Maybe it’s when we succumb to the
“Color inside the lines” rules
or the
“Everybody/Nobody is doing that!”, that we lose our grasp on what is actually real for us as individuals…I guess ‘us’ is wrong….for you or I as individuals…?
I then managed to get a little bogged down with quotes from Hemingway, Lao Tze, Jesus, Buddha, and a myriad of others who point towards the light and help guide the way, all the while stipulating that it is YOUR feet that do the walking, the tripping, the skipping, the jumping…
So… I decided to skip all of the philosophy and just post a picture…
So…never mind…don’t even read this….
Take another step, though…
It’s what you DO
that matters.!
The light will be there when you are through…!
RKPowersPhoto 
It is my opinion that we often miss the blessings of our journey when we focus on that light at the end of the tunnel instead of focusing on the present. There can be no question that we thrive on having future goals but they must not become our only concern in life. Thanks for sharing good thoughts.
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another great philosopher, who was once my studio manager, said it another way…words I now live by…”It’s what the hell you do with what the hell you got.”
Oh wait…that was you Randy.
You still got it going on. thank you.
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I don’t think the end does justify the means. I think if the means are bad, the end becomes bad, tainted, less than…. Further to that, if we don’t ever get to the end, then what we will be judged on is our means… what we actually did, not why we thought we were doing it. We like the idea of ‘end justifying means’ because it is an easy way of forgiving ourselves for the ‘off’ things we do.
When do we start forgetting the important things? Scary question – pre-supposing that we know them in the first place! 🙂 When do we focus on the light and not the texture, colour and feeling of the path in the tunnel? I think when we buy other peoples definitions of success and failure. So – yes, when we colour trees green, rivers blue and always in the lines. When we apologise for disagreeing, when we learn not to trust ourselves. When we see ACHIEVEMENT and money as ‘real’.
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I agree…I believe that “the end justifies the means” is simply one of those catch-phrases that allow people to shrug their shoulders at their own…uh…shortcomings?…evil?…inadequacies?…mis-direction?…
I think the ‘means’ perhaps justify the ‘end’. (Though I, for one, don’t believe there is necessarily an ‘end’)
I think we DO know at some point…maybe not in a verbal, cognitive way..the important things. I very distinctly remember watching, years ago. my toddler neighbor out in the back yard stumbling around in his diaper. He could barely walk, but all of a sudden, he stopped, looked up at the sky, raised his hands and laughed.
To me, a teenager at the time, I realized that he KNEW! He realized something that I had forgotten. He, in that moment became the Buddha, the Christ, the Teacher.
Thanks for the comment, btw, and a key point that you have made is, “…when we learn not to trust ourselves…” is when the path and the tunnel and the light and the destination and the journey become confused in our hearts, minds and souls
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