This week I spent a lot of time navigating to get myself from one place to the next. In some cases, I was figuring out my daily commute, in others it was simply getting out to the right building on campus. I spent a lot of time pondering the best routes to get from my job in Virginia to my home in Maryland that is 26.4 miles away. Depending on where one lives, 26.4 miles doesn’t seem that far, but when you live anywhere near Washington DC, driving 26.4 miles can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes, as I learned during my commutes home from work this week. The drive to work has been a consistent 40 to 45 minute drive. The ride home has been an adventure–my first return trip was the one that took nearly two hours. In the five days I commuted to and from work this past week, the average time getting to work was about 45 minutes and the average return trip was probably somewhere around an hour and 15 or 20 minutes or so. As I wrote earlier this week, I am making friends with the commute. But it isn’t the commute time I want to focus on as I think and write about gratitude this evening–it’s the navigation process.
I have been directionally challenged for most of my life–I’ve always gotten “turned around” pretty easily and have gradually learned not to be too hard on myself about this. My attitude has been that as long as I have three things, I don’t mind getting a little lost: time, daylight, and gas. If I am not in a hurry or trying to get someplace by a particular deadline, I am often not terribly worried about getting lost. As long as I have gas enough to get me where I’m going (or at least to the next gas station), then even if I get turned around I’m not going to run out of fuel while I get it sorted out. And, I’m not a big fan of trying to figure out where I am once the sun has gone down–driving around an unfamiliar city or on a confusing stretch of road is not my idea of a good time. So the advent of satellite navigations systems a few years back has been a real boon to me. When I first moved to California and purchased a new vehicle, I bought one that had a built-in navigation system so I could find my way around the San Francisco Bay area. It has saved me more than once and continues to help me find my way around my new environs–the new city, new confusing highways and routes, etc. have been made much more manageable because of my car’s navi system, as has the one on my smartphone.
Over the last two years I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and sometimes writing about own my internal navigation system: the part of me that helps guide me through the often confusing, sometimes treacherous waters through which I have to sail or the proverbial “mean streets” I’ve had to negotiate in making my way back from the series of unfortunate events that had detoured me off my desired path. I haven’t always been sure of where I was going or how I was going to get there, but somehow the internal navigation system has moved me along. When I’ve made a decision that turns me in a direction opposite to where the navi system told me to go, it doesn’t chastise me and I don’t end up in a ditch, it simply recalculates and gives me new directions to my destination. There is no “wrong turn.” My internal navigation system always gets me where I’m going; taking a wayward turn just means it’ll take me a little longer to get to my desired destination. What’s most important is having a sense of where I want to go. A navigation system really only works if I give it the correct destination. The extent to which I’ve periodically strayed off course has been due in part to my lack of specificity in setting the destination.
All of this is a fancy metaphorical way of saying that I have to learn to trust myself and the decisions I make, that they will lead me where I want to go. It might not be the simplest or easiest path; the road I take could be twisting and winding and steep, but it will get me where I’m going. I was talking to a friend today who has a difficult decision to make. I wish I could tell him what to do, but he knows that in the final analysis the decision is entirely up to him that he is “in it by himself.” He has said that no matter how much external support he has and who is affected by it, ultimately it is him alone who has to make and live with the decision. I would remind my friend that he cannot make a wrong turn, that no matter what he decides the Universe and his own internal navigation system will recalculate the route and he’ll still get where he’s going. That is something he’s going to have to discover for himself. In the meantime, I will continue praying for him and offering him my own unwavering support as he navigates his way through to his “what’s next.”
I am grateful for the navi that guides me on a daily basis. I have moments when I am positive that I’ve gotten myself hopelessly lost and cannot find my way out of what I’ve gotten myself into. But when I am patient with myself, slow down, take some deep breaths and remind myself that everything is in fact going to be alright, somehow I find myself back on the “right” path. This has been and will continue to be true. And for that, I am exceedingly grateful.
