It was a hazy afternoon in Los Angeles.
I’d spent the morning trying to summon a song from the sky.
But… nothing.
Just silence and self-doubt.
The kind of doubt that makes you wonder whether you have any business making music in the first place.
“… I’ll go for a walk,” I told myself.
“Maybe that will shake something loose.”
So I wandered down unfamiliar side streets and sun-warmed driveways.
Somewhere along the way, I stumbled on a mailbox dressed up like a Christmas tree.
Painted across the front in white letters were three words:
“Take a poem.”
I opened the lid and pulled out the first one I saw.
It was Ithaka by Constantine Cavafy.
A friend had just told me to read his work.
Funny how the right things find you when you need them most.
On the walk home, I read the poem.
It felt like it was written just for me:
a reminder,
a compass,
a quiet kind of permission.
Since that day, Ithaka has lived on my piano…. face out, where I can always see it.
Here’s what it taught me, one section at a time.
A Goal You Never Reach Might Be the Best Kind
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Most people chase goals because they want to arrive.
Odysses struggled for ten years to finally make it back to Ithaka.
But what if the best kind of goal is one you never actually reach?
Ithaka, the metaphorical destination, isn’t the point.
The person you become while moving toward it is.
And when you pick a goal so big that it constantly stretches you, you win every day you keep going.
Even if you never “get there.”
Your Mindset Is the Map
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high…
The biggest monsters we face are the ones we create.
This part of the poem reminds us that fear, resistance, and self-doubt are almost always internal.
If your path is lit by genuine excitement,
If you’re chasing something that energizes you,
If you find the courage to live your life true to yourself and not worry what others think,
You won’t be so easily knocked off course.
The trick is to move toward the thing that gives you more energy than it takes.
That’s how you know it’s worth chasing.
That’s how you keep going when things get hard.
Let Yourself Be Changed by the Journey
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time…
This is the heart of the matter.
The journey doesn’t just give you experiences, it makes you capable.
You don’t become someone who can write the book or paint the masterpiece overnight.
You become that person by walking the road.
By living.
By learning.
By letting every detour shape you.
The end goal isn’t a finish line…
It’s a byproduct of the person you’ve become along the way.
You Don’t Want It to Be Easy
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years…
We live in a culture that worships speed.
But “fast” rarely leads to “fulfilled.”
A long journey gives you time to gather treasures you didn’t even know you needed:
Ideas.
Wisdom.
Strength.
Friendships.
It’s the setbacks and surprises that make your life rich.
Don’t race to the end.
The wealth is in the journey.
As long as you keep going, you’re closer than you’ve ever been.
What These Ithakas Mean
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
When you finally arrive,
When you finally achieve the dream,
When you finally finish the thing you’ve worked so hard to build,
it might not feel the way you imagined.
And that’s okay.
Because by then, you’ll know it was never about that thing anyway.
It was about becoming the kind of person who keeps going.
Who finds meaning in the work.
Who knows how to stay inspired, even when the road gets long.
That’s what these Ithakas mean.
If you enjoyed reading this, the highest compliment I can think of is if you restacked it or shared it with one person who you think it would help.