When I was playing tennis yesterday, a young kid, probably 10 years old, was climbing in the bushes next to the court. He spent five minutes rustling around and I wondered, what could possibly be so valuable in that bush that it’s worth all the trouble?
Eventually he emerged with a tennis ball.
All that for one tennis ball? I had 10 tennis balls in my bag I would have given to him in a heartbeat.
But as I thought about it more, climbing through the bush and searching for the ball was the goal. It wasn’t a setback. Getting handed a tennis ball would have been no fun at all.
We think we want the tennis ball, but what we really want is to enjoy the journey it takes to find it.