Honest Abe and a weeping Jesus

A few years back I was reading this great little book by a fella named Andrew Peterson. Peterson's prolific. He's a singer-songwriter. He's written non-fiction. And he's probably most famous for his YA fantasy series. Feel free to google it... I can't think of the name of it.

But this book I was reading was a memoir of sorts. Sort of a story about his professional journey and bouts with depression.

Sounds a bit depressing. And it was. At times. But not really at the end of the day. It crescendoed into a beautiful reflection on life and his little role in the world.

So I recommended it to my lovely wife.

By the time she got around to tackling it, we were on a cross-country drive across America. Well, we were going from Louisiana to the tippy top of the Northeast.

So here we are. In the middle of nowhere Kentucky. We take a detour down Lincoln Lane. No one calls it that, but I do. There is a stretch of Kentucky where you can stop and see all these Abraham Lincoln sites.

Meanwhile... my wife is in the middle of the book, reading me this passage where Andrew visits this silent retreat. At some monastery. In Kentucky. Interesting...

So I pull the place up on Google Maps. And guess what? It's only 10 minutes or so from where we are. Bizarre coincidence…

So we pull up to the monastery. We understand they give tours to outsiders like us. Then we realize... it's July 4th. Apparently, monks love America too. No tours.

As we are about to take off, a lady at the gate flags us down. Yeah, no tours... but she'll show us around she says. She's come on retreat every year for some 15 years or so.

So I do what every good father and husband does and usher my family into this stranger lady's Montero Sport. You see, we have to get into the car to go down this trail to The Statues. The statues are the main thing we want to see. Andrew had a moment there. Maybe we will too...

We did not.

The lady drops us off, points vaguely and leaves us for dead.

We did eventually find the statues. Jesus weeping in the Garden of Gethsemane. And it was legitimately beautiful.

But we were also very hot. We'd gotten temporarily lost. And I probably even yelled at the kids a little to keep them from falling into a ravine.

But we found those bloody statues by golly! It’s just… Jesus hits different when you’ve just de-ticked an 8-year-old…

Anyhow, we made it back out and lived to tell the tale. And boy, it's one of my favorite family tales.

I'm sure there are all sorts of lessons buried in there, but the one I always go back to is some version of "it's about the journey, not the destination".

Morgan Housel, a financial writer I guess you could call him, talks about this. He tells a story about arriving on vacation in some beautiful locale and the first thought he has is "we should totally come back here next year..." Something like that anyway.

If that's the case, how much more simply can we look at our personal lives? Our careers?

Isn't it the anecdotes, the little things that happen along the way that we remember? I think so.

Promotions are great. Becoming COO is cool. CEO, neat.

Dad ran hospitals for nearly 40 years. The stories I remember are less about the place... and way more about the people and the adventures along the way.

But the place presents challenges, to be sure. And that's what I do. Let me manage all of that so you can stay more focused on the journey, not the destination.

It all starts with a review. Get clarity on comp plans. A retirement sketch too. Let me know if you are interested.

Until then...

All the best,

John Montgomery