When we Fails to See Life as a Journey
Life as a Destination-Oriented Race
Humanity has, for millennia, struggled with understanding life not as a set of fixed points but as a journey of continuous transformation. We chase goals, accumulate material, and aspire to become “something” rather than embrace the fluidity of existence. The notion of life as a destination-oriented race has, in many ways, obstructed the human capacity to experience life as an ongoing process. But why does humanity fail to grasp this more abstract view of life? What prevents us from seeing life as an ever-changing, dynamic journey? In this essay, by tracing historical patterns of thought, cognitive science insights, and cultural biases, I attempt to uncover why humanity has such difficulty perceiving life as a journey, and why this shift in perception could unlock a richer, more meaningful existence.
The Evolutionary Imperative : Survival Through Certainty
Our ancestors’ survival was predicated on certainty. The early humans who thrived did so by developing cognitive shortcuts — heuristics — that favored immediate goals, certainty, and predictability. If you live in a world where food is scarce, predators are everywhere, and life expectancy is short, you do not have the luxury to think of life as an open-ended, indefinite journey. Evolution favored the brain that compartmentalized life into immediate objectives: find food, find shelter, reproduce.
This gave rise to a form of deterministic thinking : life as a series of tasks to accomplish, where each success increases survival. Certainty was a form of comfort in the chaos of prehistoric life. And while modern society no longer faces the same existential threats, our brains still crave that sense of closure, completion, and certainty. The human brain, wired for survival, instinctively clings to a destination-oriented view of life. It prefers the cognitive ease of setting goals and ticking them off as completed — anything more abstract feels unmanageable.
Psychological Narratives : The Cognitive Illusion of Achievement
Psychology offers us further insight. The human psyche craves meaning, a purpose that lends coherence to life’s chaotic and seemingly random events. The “narrative fallacy”, popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, suggests that our brains construct simplified stories to impose order on disorder. Life as a journey is messy, filled with unknowns, unplanned detours, and, worst of all, uncertainty. The human brain rebels against such ambiguity by constructing life as a series of linear stories with beginnings, middles, and ends.
This process of story-building creates a cognitive illusion : that we can measure life in terms of achievement. Graduation, career milestones, marriage, parenthood, retirement — these become checkpoints. They create a psychological framework that comforts us with the illusion of progress and success. However, when we become fixated on these milestones, we cease to see life for what it truly is: an ever-evolving continuum. The pursuit of these artificial endpoints displaces our ability to appreciate the process of life itself.
Philosophical Roots : Existentialism and the Human Condition
The problem is further compounded by the philosophical tradition. The rise of existentialism in the 19th and 20th centuries — primarily through the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus — brought attention to the “absurdity” of human existence. For these thinkers, life had no inherent meaning. People had to create their own meaning in a world that didn’t care for their goals, dreams, or aspirations. And yet, even existentialism could not escape the human need to infuse life with goal-oriented meaning.
Take Camus’ famous metaphor of Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. For Camus, Sisyphus must accept his futile labor and find joy in the act itself — the journey of pushing the rock, despite knowing there is no ultimate point. However, while Camus implores us to see life as a journey, he also illustrates how challenging it is to break free from the deep-rooted human need for finality and resolution.
In a world devoid of intrinsic meaning, we become desperate to impose meaning upon our lives. We invent goals, careers, and purposes, viewing them as ends rather than means. While philosophers like Sartre argue for radical freedom and the potential to choose how we interpret life, this freedom often becomes overwhelming. Many people prefer the simplicity of preordained paths. It is easier to chase pre-defined endpoints than to embrace the journey.
Cultural Biases : The Legacy of Linear Time
Western culture, in particular, fosters a strong belief in linear time. The Judeo-Christian tradition promotes a vision of life as a linear trajectory — creation, fall, redemption, and the afterlife. The Industrial Revolution entrenched this further by institutionalizing rigid milestones: from the factory line to the academic ladder to corporate hierarchies. Success and fulfillment are measured by outputs, results, and promotions, reinforcing the notion that life is a series of consecutive checkpoints.
Contrastingly, many Eastern traditions — such as Buddhism and Taoism — emphasize cyclical time and the acceptance of life as an ongoing process. Buddhism teaches that clinging to outcomes is the source of suffering and that true contentment comes from experiencing life as a continuous journey of awareness. Yet, despite the growing popularity of mindfulness in the West, these ideas remain at odds with Western cultural norms. The West is, at its core, productivity-driven and destination-oriented.
This cultural bias toward linearity leaves little room for viewing life as an unfolding journey. From childhood, we are conditioned to think in terms of grades, jobs, achievements, and legacies. Education systems emphasize progress from one level to the next, while careers are marked by promotions and titles. The cultural environment reinforces the evolutionary and psychological tendencies toward focusing on endpoints rather than experiences.
The Modern Condition : Technology and the End of the Journey
The digital age exacerbates these tendencies. With the rise of social media, we now have immediate, tangible feedback on life’s progress. Whether it’s likes on Instagram, followers on Twitter, or career updates on LinkedIn, the internet has made life’s destinations more visible and measurable than ever. We now measure success in quantifiable terms: followers, money, job titles. These metrics offer a false sense of completion — making it even harder to recognize life as an ungraspable, continuous flow.
Furthermore, the pace of technological development has shortened our attention spans. We demand instant gratification, quick answers, and clear resolutions. In such an environment, life-as-journey thinking appears too slow, too vague, and too abstract to satisfy modern minds. The quest for immediate results blinds us to the subtler, more profound realization that life’s beauty lies not in arriving, but in traveling.
The Journey : Reclaiming Life’s Fluidity
To shift from destination thinking to journey thinking requires a reorientation of mind and culture. It demands that we embrace the ambiguity of life — its fluidity, changeability, and unpredictability. The journey-centered view of life invites us to relinquish the illusion of control and certainty in favor of experiencing life as it unfolds in real-time.
Philosophically, this shift aligns with the process thought of thinkers like Alfred North Whitehead, who argued that reality is not made of static objects but dynamic processes. We are not fixed beings marching toward a particular end, but processes unfolding within a vast, interconnected web of existence. Likewise, existentialist thinkers like Sartre remind us that life is not about reaching a fixed point but about constantly making choices that define who we are.
Psychologically, we must become comfortable with the “flow state,” described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which emerges when we are fully immersed in the present activity. Flow emphasizes the joy and fulfillment found in the process, not in reaching some future outcome.
Embracing the Journey (conclusion)
Humanity’s failure to see life as a journey is deeply rooted in our evolutionary biology, psychological tendencies, and cultural narratives. We are wired to seek certainty, closure, and milestones, yet this fixation on destinations impoverishes our experience of life’s richness. To embrace life as a journey is to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity, and change.
It means recognizing that life is not a race to be won but a path to be explored, without a final destination. By shifting from destination-oriented thinking to journey-oriented living, we open ourselves to a deeper, more authentic experience of life. It allows us to savor the present, relish in the process, and ultimately find meaning in the unfolding itself, not in the elusive arrival.
The greatest irony, perhaps, is that the key to “winning” life lies not in reaching the finish line, but in realizing that there was never a finish line to begin with. Life was always the journey itself.
Thanks for dropping by !
Disclaimer : Everything written above, I owe to the great minds I’ve encountered and the voices I’ve heard along the way.