The Journey

by AJ/Skald

Process, not product, is what ecstasy is all about. Business wants to sell us products. They are product obsessed: End results....The bottom line.

But in life its process, the flow, that engages us. Thats why art, music, sports, sex, games, parties, and dancing are so damn fun. And why a focus on results kills the enjoyment (think of those hyper-competitive assholes who must always win to be happy; they are instant killjoys).

In play the results dont fucking matter. Dancing is fun just for the sake of dancing. Shooting a video is a blast, even if the end product is of terrible quality. Whitewater rafting is great fun while you're doing it; getting to the end is a let down.

Its the ride that matters. Not "winning" or "losing". Winning & losing are goals that only emotional retards focus on.

This is the fundamental flaw of business and businessmen. Its why they are, as a general rule, so intellectually stunted, so cold, so heartless, and so lacking in joy and imagination.

This is what drives me nuts about business. They don't give a damn about what they are doing. Nothing is done for its own sake-- always for something else... always for some diabolical goal or concept (namely, money). Your average businessman cant imagine doing something for its own sake, regardless of its profit potential. Suggest that they do so and they go berserk... start frothing at the mouth and gibbering about "the market". How do people become so far removed from their humanity?

Hobopoets recognize that the journey is THE thing-- the ONLY thing. There is, in fact, no end. Even death is but a journey: the biggest and most mysterious of all.

Thoreau recognized this. He wrote that travel is the fundamental archetype of our lives-- for what is life but a process of going from, to. Ever onward.

When a zen master was asked for the meaning of life and enlightenment, he responded,
"Walk on".

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent upon arriving" --Lao Tzu

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