The Trail

Key Takeaways

• The "number" won't save you. The retirement milestone you're fixated on is almost never the actual source of fulfillment.
• Doubt doesn't mean your plan is broken—it usually means you haven't stayed on the trail long enough to see what's already working.
• Turning back is the real risk. Every month you stay the course gets credited, even when it feels like nothing is happening.

Recently, I've attended the 5:30pm Mass. A ritual that's become sacred time for me and my oldest daughter Grace. Perhaps the only truly quiet hour of our week. During the homily, Father O'Hanlon told a story that has stayed with me ever since.

He began by explaining that a few years ago, he had gone on what he called "a business trip to Las Vegas." Think about that for a second. A priest describing Las Vegas as a business trip! I nearly laughed out loud. But he continued, explaining that during this trip, he found himself with a free day and decided to finally do something he'd always wanted to do: drive out to see the Grand Canyon.

The Journey

He pulled out a map, and the route looked straightforward enough. From Las Vegas, you head southeast through Boulder City, cross the Hoover Dam, continue into Arizona, and after about four and a half hours, you reach the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park—one of the most photographed landscapes on Earth.

Father O'Hanlon knew exactly what to expect. He had the image we all carry: the classic postcard view. Scorched red rock. Shimmering desert heat rising from the canyon floor. Barren, carved-out earth. In August, surely it would be over a hundred degrees, the kind of heat that makes you genuinely fearful.

Disorientation

But when he arrived at the South Rim near Mather Point and stepped out of his car, something felt immediately wrong. It was cool, maybe sixty or seventy degrees. Instead of blazing desert, he saw pine trees, forest shade, and paved paths. Some people were even wearing sweatshirts.

He looked around, bewildered, and thought: This is not the Grand Canyon.

Everything he had imagined—every movie, every textbook, every photograph—had taught him to expect something entirely different. There was no canyon in sight. No furnace blast of heat. No desert. Just trees. Just quiet. Just a landscape that didn't match the picture in his head at all.

He was about to get back in the car to drive until he found cell service—to figure out what had gone wrong—when he noticed a small sign marking a trail. He thought, "Well, before I turn around and retrace my steps, I might as well follow this for a minute."

The Revelation

He started walking. It was a short path, maybe a hundred yards—not even a real hike. Just enough for the trees to thin and the air to expand. And then, in one single step, it all opened up.

The ground fell away. He found himself standing at the edge of something so vast, so deep, and so violently beautiful that it almost didn't feel real. The canyon walls sank nearly a mile down. The colors were layered in the rock as if God had painted them by hand. The distance stretched so far that his eyes struggled to measure it.

He realized then that the Grand Canyon had been exactly where it was supposed to be all along. He had simply been standing above it—at 7,000 feet of elevation, on a forested rim where the temperature stays cool and the pine trees hide the drop until you move toward the edge.

He wasn't lost. He wasn't in the wrong place. He just hadn't walked far enough to see what was already there.

Metaphor

I haven't been able to shake that image since last night. The metaphor feels almost too perfect.

Father O'Hanlon connected it to the idea that fulfillment doesn't come from the things we fantasize about. Not the promotion, not the major win, not the championship ring—whatever that thing is we think will finally satisfy us. That thing is almost never the actual source of fulfillment.

What we're truly looking for is deeper. Sometimes a mile deeper. And most people never walk far enough to see it or experience it.

Application

We all carry pictures in our heads of what success should look like. What progress should look like. What our lives should look like by now. What security should feel like.

And when reality doesn't match that picture—when we find pine trees instead of desert, 65 degrees instead of 110—we assume we've made a wrong turn.

We start asking: Where did I go wrong? Why isn't this working? Why does this feel uphill when by now it should feel downhill?

The answer, most of the time, is simple: We haven't walked far enough down the trail.

The Great Cosmic Bank

We've talked before about what's been called "the Great Cosmic Bank"—an invisible accounting system where every honest effort you make gets credited. Even when it looks like rejection. Even when it feels like silence. Even when nothing appears to be happening, the deposit is instant. The reward may show up later, perhaps much later.

How many times has this already happened to you?

A difficult season passes, and clarity arrives. You make a hard decision, and something better materializes seemingly out of thin air. You stay the course when everything tells you to turn around, and suddenly the path opens up.

Coincidence? Or is that the canyon revealing itself the moment you step through the trees?

Questions For ALl of us

So the question for all of us is this:

Are we willing to keep walking down the trail even when the scenery doesn't match the picture in our head?

Do we trust that the work we're doing will be rewarded?

Are we willing to stay long enough to see the canyon?

Father O'Hanlon's homily reminded me that fulfillment rarely lives in the things we imagine. It lives in the walk. In the diligence. In the courage to keep going when so many others turn around and get back in the car. In the conviction that the canyon is there—always—even when the trees hide it.

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Ben Beck is Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer at Beck Bode, a deliberately different wealth management firm with a unique view on investing, business and life.