If you want to see The Pyramids in Giza you need to do a lot of work before that. Researching and planning flights, booking hotels, maybe learning a few basics of the language so when you arrive you can successfully negotiate with cab drivers or tour operators to get there. Then you need to travel there – that’s an 18-hour flight from Australia. You need to work through airports, traffic, hoteliers, street-vendors and huge cultural differences if you want to see the pyramids.
But, then you arrive, and they are glorious.
Then, shortly after that feeling wears off, you realise that you can’t stay there forever. You’ll need to go home soon.
Any amazing experience doesn’t just happen. Whether it’s visiting The Pyramids in Giza or making your next big art project. Both of these ‘dreams’ sit on a horizon (the pyramids are just a bit more ‘concrete’ than an artistic idea). You can’t just sit on the couch and wait for a flash of divinity to transport you to the pyramids anymore than you can wait for it to produce your ambitious art project.
The promise of the future experience – the feeling we’ll get when we get there – gives us the motivation to do the work to get there. The more work we do to make it happen, the bigger the feeling we get. And, when that experience arrives? Well, it doesn’t last long, but it’s unlike anything else. We take that feeling back home with us and use it as fuel to do the work to reach our next destination; our next ambitious project.
I remember what it was like to be in the presence of the pyramids, and to finish that ambitious art project, and that’s what keeps me motivated to wade through the work to arrive at the next one.