Journey or Destination?

I am an extremely goal-oriented person. I don't think this was a learned thing. I think it is hard-coded in my DNA. When I was 10 years old, if I felt like going for a walk, I would ask my mom if she needed anything at the store, so I'd have a destination, a reason to walk the half-mile each way.

One thing that appealed to me about T'ai Chi (as compared to yoga or meditation or going to the gym) was that there is a goal. Not a goal like being able to stick your foot behind your head or lose 10 pounds, but to learn an entire form. Since May, I've been learning the Kuang Ping Yang right long form. It takes 20 minutes to complete the whole sequence. I've been learning from a DVD that Bill Douglas (the Complete Idiot's Guide author) created. (I considered going to a T'ai Chi school in my town, but at $60/month and the aforementioned race against the bank balance, decided the rave-review DVD was a better investment at this time.) There are 18 lessons. You do a new one each week.

I had gotten through lesson 9 when I was talking up my new-found love of T'ai Chi to my family, including my loved one with the thyroid cancer. She was very interested, so I lent her my book and DVD. And thus began my little journey-vs-destination experiment. Not learning any new parts of the form. Not making any new progress toward my destination. Just practicing what I already knew.

The first Saturday (the day I usually did the new lesson for the first time), I didn't even realize it was New Lesson Day until after I was already in the middle of practice. I seemed very much on the journey that day, and was very pleased with myself. The second Saturday, I was out of town, busy at the convention, so New Lesson Day wasn't even on the radar. Focusing on the journey wasn't so hard! But when I got back, at about two and a half weeks, I realized I was starting to get antsy. I heard myself saying, "I should do T'ai Chi early today and get it over with." Get it over with! Oh no! Noooooooooooo!

Time for intervention. I asked my loved one if she had looked at the DVD at all. No, she hadn't had time, what with the upcoming surgery and all. Could I have it back until after you recover? Sure. (BTW, the surgery went "perfectly". She is on the mend, and more perked up and acting like herself today. More later.) So, after a few days of withdrawal, today was New Lesson Day again. Yay! And now my hips are blissfully sore from the high kicks I learned today.

So, these are the results of my experiment: Three weeks of journey-only is my current upper limit. But considering that waiting an entire week for the next lesson was a stretch at the beginning, that's progress, right?

I'm already starting to worry about what I'm going to do once I've learned the long form. What's next?

Can I have the goal of not having a goal?

Nah!