Life is a…Road Trip
Yes, I know the song lyrics are “Life is a highway…,” but that wasn’t my ah-ha this week. If you saw my post yesterday about music play lists, you’ll know that I’m doing a series of road trips from Delaware to South Carolina this winter since the horse my daughter rides is spending the winter in Aiken, SC with the trainer and our hybrid school model gives us some flexibility. We make the drive twice a month, and it’s about a 9 ½ hour drive so we have lots of time to think, listen to music, plan blogs, and for her to do her school work.
When I started to think about my blog topic for this week, I realized that a road trip has all the components of what we face in our lives. So let me share how…
Any good road trip begins with preparation…what do I need to bring, how many stops do I think I’ll make, do I need to worry about weather, what directions do I need (thank goodness for Waze), how many snacks/drinks do I need for the ride, etc. Our lives are full of planning for what we might need, how we’ll get there, what we need to be prepared for. I usually am pretty good about managing all of the road trip planning in my head but sometimes not writing it all down and thinking ahead leaves me with a forgotten item or frustration for not remembering to think about something specific.
Often road trips take us on paths that we wouldn’t necessarily choose – narrow roads with no shoulder, winding twists and turns, long bridges (I dread driving over bridges though love being a passenger), or bad weather where we can’t effectively see where we’re going. Life throws these situations at us all the time unfortunately --situations we may or may not be able to plan for. We can be prepared in case they might happen or know that they’ll be ahead but that doesn’t make the discomfort or fear any easier (at least for me). The key to-do is to take a deep breath, keep breathing, remember the strategies that you practiced, and keep moving ahead. Or…worst case, stop. Sometimes we need to recognize that the situation we’re in is too precarious, and we need to stop and reassess how to move forward.
It's been rare for me to make it through a road trip without some amount of a slow down due to traffic congestion or an accident or construction. In life, we hope to move forward quickly but unexpected situations pop up and slow down our progress. Our patience is tested, particularly when the situation extends for a long time. All we can do in these situations is relax and know that things will move forward again…maybe just later than we would like. Being frustrated won’t make things better as anyone who has spent an extended period of time in a car on a highway not moving forward would tell you.
On many trips, we hit wide open road with a high speed limit and can just put on the cruise control with some great music and enjoy the ride. These are the best moments of the ride. We're one with the open road. In life, we sometimes forget to enjoy those moments of cruising because we’re so anxious about getting to our destination. We need to recognize when these times are happening so we can enjoy them.
Eventually, all road trips end, and we arrive at our destination. We’re always relieved to get there, but based on the experience we had along the way, we may be excited from all the things we saw or experienced or frazzled or a bit of both. We may be frustrated that it took too long or that our passengers stressed us out or that the other drivers were not courteous or we can look at it just as the part of an exciting journey with lots of twists and turns...like a good mystery book.
We have the potential to arrive at all the destinations we desire, but we do have to plan. We do need to be prepared for the unexpected situations that will inevitably arise. We will have times that we need to slow down or take a detour. And, we will have times when we are just cruising ahead…maybe faster than we thought we would be able to go. All of these are part of the overall experience. Our choice is to enjoy the ride with all the good and bad or lament the parts we don’t like so much that the ride itself isn’t enjoyable.
I choose to face the hard parts of the road trip of life and see how it impacts the ride to my destination.