Journey Before Destination
January 5th, 2026
After nearly two decades in the same profession, I find myself in a season of transition. I began to question how much of my identity has been tied to what I do rather than who I am.
Like many professionals, my instinct when faced with uncertainty is to create a plan.
I like maps.
I like knowing where I'm going.
I like believing that enough preparation can eliminate risk.
Before the holidays, I found myself trying to solve the future. I explored possibilities, considered new directions, and searched for clarity about what might come next.
But nothing came to me. The answers I wanted weren't arriving. The future refused to reveal itself.
For someone who has spent much of their life solving problems, this was deeply uncomfortable.
Yet the discomfort revealed something important: not every transition can be managed through strategy alone.
The Divine Spark in the Dark
So, for the past week, I did almost nothing.
The weather was poor. I didn’t go to yoga. I read, watched television, and spent time with my little person. I rested in a way that felt unfamiliar, without improvement, without a plan. Ideas came to me, but I felt overwhelmed, so I let them go for another day.
Yesterday, I asked the universe for help. And it came.
Not as a new opportunity, but as an answer to a question I’ve carried for years: Why are we born ignorant? Why must we begin in darkness, struggling to remember who we are?
In Yogic philosophy, this forgetting is called avidya. It describes the way we lose touch with what is true beneath fear, roles, and survival. I understood the idea. What I didn’t understand was why forgetting seemed to be part of life’s design.
I’ve heard many spiritual teachers attempt to answer this question, but they never explain why it happens; they focus only on what happens. Their explanations never fully resonated with me.
The answer that arrived wasn’t a solution to my immediate circumstances. It was a bigger answer, not to this problem, but to the nature of all problems. And it came unexpectedly through Words of Radiance, the second book in The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson.
In the book, a shoemaker named Ym shares a story with a young boy that feels deeply Yogic. He explains that all beings are part of “the One,” a singular, ancient consciousness that knew everything, yet had experienced nothing.
To remedy this, the One became many. It fractured itself into billions of divine sparks, living through people so that it could experience the full range of existence.
As the One, we knew the Truth; as many, we require ignorance. Without it, there is no discovery. No contrast. No meaning. If we knew the ending, the experience would be hollow. We must walk the path without knowing where it leads, because knowing would undo the very experience the universe is trying to have through us.
Robert Sanderson’s words were the Truth, and I felt it.
Relinquishing the Map
My resistance to change hasn’t protected me. It has only made the journey more painful, clouding my mind with fear . I’ve spent so much energy worrying about the destination that I forgot why I am here: to feel what it is like to be alive inside this storm.
Regardless of what the future holds, I still have to walk through the coming months. There is no shortcut. No strategic plan can shield me from the experience of transition. The only real choice I have is the spirit in which I take the next step.
Will I walk with grace or suffering?
Will I allow this upheaval to refine me, or will I let it harden me?
In Sanderson’s book, the Words of Radiance are:
“Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before destination.”
It has become my mantra recently. I don’t know the destination, and I am learning to accept that it isn’t the point.
So as I walk forward, I won’t be the strategist trying to outrun the storm. I will be the traveller, willing to walk through it, curious to see what the universe wants to experience today
