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Once upon a time when this website was launched as my "professional" website, it featured such taglines such as "This resume is a prediction of the future" and "Business is about the Future". Little did I know. "The Journey" was the culmination of a period when everything began to break apart, and simultaneously come together. Maybe it really began as I returned to Rotterdam after my project with P&G in Frankfurt. Two major goals I had set for myself long ago and been achieved; my MBA program at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) was coming to a close and P&G Germany, a symbol of a past defeat, had come full-circle. For the first time since my adolescence in the mountains of eastern Tennessee I had no goal, and yet even with a business school education and my international outlook, there was so muchI still had to learn. Between the end of classes and my graduation I went to Boston for ten days to, as I wrote in an email to a friend and mentor, "listen to the sounds of life." There I sat in a Starbucks reading "The Alchemist", a book about a boy on his journey to find his treasure. I returned to Holland with US$1600 in vouchers from Lufthansa, the result of being bumped two days in a row. I knew immediately I would be using them for a trip to Australia. Despite graduating in the worst economic climate of the past ten years, I had a job offer in Switzerland. Problem was, I knew I had to go to Australia. Instead of simply declining, as in retrospect I perhaps shold have done, I pitched the company a consulting project, sold it and invited a couple of my colleagues from B-school to join me. Then I did the unthinkable - I split the proceeds evenly with my teammates. Although I sold the project, I did not take extra. For me it wasn't about the cash, I knew I had to help others stay in Europe. And I wanted to learn about my leadership qualities, and help people. Unexpectedly I also learned about the mistrust and need for control of those very people I set out to help. After the project I returned to Holland in November, needing some fun and sun. I had been checking for a couple months, but Lufthansa was booked full on flights to Australia through to the expiration of my vouchers. Resigned to the fact my trip wouldn't happen after all, I used some of the vouchers and booked a two-week trip to Caracas, Venezuela for a wedding and some R&R on a beach. After all, I am now part of this jet-set group of international business people, and some friends in Europe were just going for the weekend. Only days before my departure the oil workers in Venezuela went on strike. Yet, Lufthansa was still flying there . . . they just couldn't tell me if they could get me back to Europe or not. In the end, I never even packed for the trip, chucked the ticket and lost a good portion of my vouchers. Then a couple days later the unexpected happened . . . seats on Lufthansa leaving in two weeks to Australia opened up. I booked. I threw everything I had into storage in Amsterdam and set out with just my backpack, a copy of "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and NO PLAN (except for a 3-day trip on the Indian-Pacific train) for a five-week trek in Australia and two weeks in Thailand. I landed in Melbourne on New Year's Eve, a day that I usually set a goal for myself to achieve in the coming year. This time however, there would be no goal set. The Journey is the Goal. | |||||||||
