My dad and I took a mini road trip this weekend some 1,000 total miles. We drove during the day, the night, with clear skies overhead, and even through heavy rain. At one point we couldn’t see past our car’s headlights, but we still kept moving forward. And before we knew it, we made it to our destination.
It’s kind of how life is, isn’t it? A never-ending road trip to some place we can’t see because it’s so overwhelmingly far. But does that mean we don’t take the trip? Some think that’s enough not to, others laugh and disagree with confidence. As we were driving through the storm, I kept thinking how life wasn’t all that different from this car ride.
It’s true: life is notorious for never conforming to the standard. We may expect our lives to be a certain way, just as my dad and I expected our road trip to be a certain way, but lo and behold, nothing was as planned. Our sunny day was a rainy one; our 7-hour drive was 9 hours; the satellite radio was a bust, all the good CDs were in the other car and the static FM station had to be changed about every hour. But that didn’t stop us from moving forward. Yet, so many of us let life’s little bumps deter us from doing the things we want to do.
Take writing, for example. I spoke to a novelist the other day who described to me the reality of writer’s block: “It’s real, but not as powerful as you think it is.” Some days the words flow out of you, other days they’re complete crap. Quality doesn’t matter if there’s no quantity. Many of us fixate on making our work so perfect that we end up never creating it. And it makes sense. If you want to write a novel, you have to write. Period. A page a day, if you have to. But you don’t stop.
We couldn’t see past our headlights, but we kept driving through the rain and eventually got to where we wanted to go.
We are all hopeful of the things we might find along the way of life, the excitement of what is new, and the exhilaration of experiencing it all. Several of us know exactly what is it we want to find, few actually find it, and the majority of us don’t. We may choose to plan out our lives a certain way, but discover that the timing, the job, the friend group we end up with, the spouse, the number of children or lack thereof, the life we envision for ourselves just doesn’t align with reality. It might feel like we have failed, like we took the wrong turn somewhere or like the world was against us succeeding the whole time. And maybe it is. But if we focus on the mess that may or may not be waiting for us between now and our future, we’ll also surely miss the bliss.
It’s not uncommon for us to think that there’s no use in taking any measureable steps forward. After all, the distance is too vast and too unpredictable. When you can only see so far, why push forward? Why not wait for the storm to clear or go back to where there is no rain? It’s easier, simpler….
…but God, so much less rewarding.
