Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome. — Arthur Ashe
I ran across the above quote someplace, and it let me remember a favorite poem of mine entitled “Ithaka” by Constantine Cavafy. Ithaka was the Greek city that Odysseus, the wandering hero of The Iliad and The Odyssey, kept trying to go home to. How many years pass by in the stories? I think he traveled and experienced great adventures for about ten years before he finally made it home to his wife, probably just in time since men of the community were trying to woo her. The poem reads, in part:
When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
...
Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But do not in the least hurry the journey.
Better that it lasts for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you will have understood what these Ithakas mean.
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Many’s the time when I have reached some goal, I find that it did not satisfy me all that much. It was the getting there that was memorable, not the owning it, or reaching it, or seeing it. I have both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my personal library, and I fully intend to go back and read them. The message in them is thousands of years old, but it still stands today.
