The Myth of Arrival: Why the Finish Line Never Brings Peace

There was a season in my life when I believed clarity would come with arrival.

If I could just get the promotion, land the title, finish the project, finally make the impact, then I would feel steady. Then I would know I was on the right path.

But every milestone left me with the same quiet ache. The horizon kept moving. The arrival never arrived.

One night, after a long day of back-to-back meetings, I sat in my car in the driveway too tired to walk inside. I thought about how hard I had been working to get “there,” and how, even with all the accomplishments, I still felt strangely lost.

That is when it dawned on me: maybe there is no “there.”

Maybe clarity is not a destination at all. Maybe it is a compass. A way of orienting, not arriving. A way of returning to myself in the moment instead of chasing a finish line that does not exist.

That shift changed everything. Once I stopped chasing arrival, I started practicing alignment. And alignment, not achievement, became my True North.

The Illusion of Arrival

The myth of arrival whispers to us in a thousand subtle ways: