Five years ago to the day, I defended my graduate thesis. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I had built it up in my head as the be-all and end-all of all things academic in grad school. For almost a year I had been working toward this day, looking forward to it. Had all this nervous energy flowing through me. When my prof finally signed off on the document, it was bittersweet. The defense in the end turned out to be a mere formality. There was no real sense of achievement. I had a document which now said I was a Master of Science. Friends were calling me up and congratulating me. But I didn't really feel like that. The fuss seemed pointless.
And as I walked around campus shortly after I realized the defense itself really has no meaning. Its a mere full-stop. What will stay with me through life are the long hours spent in the lab, the conversations with my labmates, the frustrations of being stuck, the little victories of progress. Those are the moments that I'll look back on fondly.
Running a marathon is very similar. On race day, for the most part, you're just going through the motions. The real joy lies in the grind of the training. Getting out of bed at 5am when you don't really want to, running with friends, pushing your body despite it telling you that your running on empty, the frustrationo of being injured, carefully treading the line between training and overtraining and passing milestones along the way. That's the heart and soul of it!
Sometimes we get too caught up in the results and the consequences that we fail to appreciate the process itself. I think a lot of times its the journey that matters more than the destination and the sooner we learn to enjoy it the better we are for it.
