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The journey, not the destination, matters
24th November 2023
Schools can be difficult places to work if you are someone for whom end points matter. If you work in business, you may have projects which get completed within a client’s deadline, with a line then drawn under them and a new project started. For all of us, the term will have started with our own goals – be they big whole school hopes and aspirations, or perhaps more likely, personal plans for what we want to achieve.
In education there’s never an end point. We recognize this, and the difficulties which come with a lack of finality, by creating them for ourselves. These may be examination outcomes, OFSTED windows, the end of a financial year, or an upcoming holiday. Yet for all of these points, they are really only a pause, a breath held before launching headlong into the next, broadly similar period of time.
But rather than this be a problem, I think it tells a more universal truth that we should embrace – that it is the journey, not the destination, which matters. Literature, TV and film understand this. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would be a dull book indeed if the journey undertaken by the fellowship – and the overcoming of hurdles, bonding of unlikely friends and personal improvement - wasn’t involved. And yet, year in year out, people are drawn to undertake this journey with them – all 37 hours and 36 minutes of reading (on average). Shakespeare’s Hamlet could be done in a single scene if it were just about the end point. But it is not the outcome which makes the play timeless. Hamlet’s own soul searching, perhaps most memorably seen in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy, is the real story here. Even Harry Potter could have avoided most of the 3,407 pages if the only thing that mattered was the ending.
It is perhaps within these examples that reality sits. Finality suggests an unchangeable conclusion. Yet without the opportunity to input or invest into anything from this point, we quickly resign the outcome to history. End points are only as satisfying as the investment we have put in along the way – and every person within a school is part of that investment.
And so it is that we must embrace the journey. It must be that it is the day to day challenges, small accomplishments and personal developments that we cherish. It is those that are memorable.
Schools can be difficult places to work if you are someone for whom end points matter. If you work in business, you may have projects which get completed within a client’s deadline, with a line then drawn under them and a new project started. For all of us, the term will have started with our own goals – be they big whole school hopes and aspirations, or perhaps more likely, personal plans for what we want to achieve.
In education there’s never an end point. We recognize this, and the difficulties which come with a lack of finality, by creating them for ourselves. These may be examination outcomes, OFSTED windows, the end of a financial year, or an upcoming holiday. Yet for all of these points, they are really only a pause, a breath held before launching headlong into the next, broadly similar period of time.
But rather than this be a problem, I think it tells a more universal truth that we should embrace – that it is the journey, not the destination, which matters. Literature, TV and film understand this. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would be a dull book indeed if the journey undertaken by the fellowship – and the overcoming of hurdles, bonding of unlikely friends and personal improvement - wasn’t involved. And yet, year in year out, people are drawn to undertake this journey with them – all 37 hours and 36 minutes of reading (on average). Shakespeare’s Hamlet could be done in a single scene if it were just about the end point. But it is not the outcome which makes the play timeless. Hamlet’s own soul searching, perhaps most memorably seen in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy, is the real story here. Even Harry Potter could have avoided most of the 3,407 pages if the only thing that mattered was the ending.
It is perhaps within these examples that reality sits. Finality suggests an unchangeable conclusion. Yet without the opportunity to input or invest into anything from this point, we quickly resign the outcome to history. End points are only as satisfying as the investment we have put in along the way – and every person within a school is part of that investment.
And so it is that we must embrace the journey. It must be that it is the day to day challenges, small accomplishments and personal developments that we cherish. It is those that are memorable.
