Process is Reality

Some of you may have missed the hugeness of the point I made in my last post (yes, hugeness is a word). I am only beginning to realize the scope of this truth and the impact it has on every facet of my life. Process is reality, and I don't like it. Let us just take a few examples of how this works:

1. Clean House. Most people want a clean house, and they hate cleaning. The fact is cleaning is a reality if you want a clean house. You don't just "achieve" cleanness and then it stays.
2. Getting in shape. Everyone wants to be in shape and have good health, few people like to change the way they eat and exercise. The fact is even if you reach your "goal weight" or look or whatever, you won't stay there unless you continue the process.
3. Spiritual development. It is all good and well to say that I want to learn how to "trust God better". But, there is a process that is required for that trust to move from intellect to experience. And, once I have learned to trust God in one area He will move the process to another area.

Life is a moving stream. We never sit still. You are either moving forward or backward... because process is reality; achievement is fleeting at best, pure fiction at worst. Think about it. How valuable are your greatest achievements in life if you take them as stand-alone events? Even beyond work, if we think of things like our marriage or our kids... they are without value apart from process. It is the process of being married for 12 years that has been valuable, not the one day that I actually became married. The same is true with my kids. There is very little value in having children if we are not going to put the time and effort into them that they require over the rest of their lives.

Every thing you have achieved at work is the same way... it finds its value within the process, not the one-time act. Even still we seem to fight this constant desire to "arrive". We think that if we can only, "meet the right person", "have good kids", "get that new promotion", or "meet this life-goal" that we will finally arrive at a destination that will bring us joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction.

The problem is that joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction are all things that are supposed to come from the process, not the achievement. Achievements are too small, too quickly come and gone, to carry the weight of something like joy. Achievements are too anchored in time to be able to provide something as future-minded as hope.

I will be coming back to this mindset change from time to time because it is insidious in its ability to work its way into every facet of our life... telling us that if we can only reach some higher achievement that we will finally be fulfilled.