We are conditioned from an early age to evaluate every endeavor by its terminus. We ask where a path leads before deciding whether it is worth walking, measuring our steps solely by the coordinates of arrival.

Yet when I look back at the chapters that shaped me most intensely, nearly all of them ended in a dead end. Projects that evaporated overnight; intense obsessions that dissolved into thin air; seasons of devotion that left no tangible monument behind.

At the time, arriving at nothing felt like an irreparable defeat. But in truth, certain roads are not constructed to take you to a destination. Their sole, clandestine purpose is to dismantle the person who entered them so that someone entirely different can walk out.

You do not need a trophy from every valley you crossed. The transformation was the arrival.