Tonight I drove from Sydney to Macksville for a friend’s birthday.
It’s a 5.5 hour drive which became 7 because
for much of the way it pounded with rain,
making for hard driving.
You could hardly see the front of the car,
what do you mind the road ahead.
I could have pulled over and
waited for the rain to stop
but this is Australia.
The next village or turnoff
is not around the next corner,
or the one after that;
so I continued with what I call driving blind.
It strikes me we are all leading our lives this way
whether we are aware of it or not
We have no idea what is next.
But my, don’t we refuse to accept this.
So we create all sorts of shenanigans
to convince ourselves otherwise.
There’s the constant pursuit of security:
work, financial, relationship, stability.
We look for this in a myriad of ways.
You can hold a vision so rigidly
you miss out on much of the sideshows of life,
as you keep yourself so firmly fixed
on the end game;
barely aware of the world around you,
completely unconscious
that the journey is as important as the destination.
You might reach the financial, artistic, material goals
and you might be alone when you get there
or it might not be what you thought it would be after all.
You can bumble from one day to the next
chopping and changing upon a whim
getting distracted by the next shiny thing,
often suffering from FOMO
so everything is interesting,
until it’s isn’t anymore,
or after a while you become disheartened
because nothing you try works.
Relationships, work, places all turn out
to not be the ’solution’ they promised.
As they say if you have no idea
where you’re going you’ll probably get there.
You can have a vision
of where you would like to get to,
a lifestyle, a feeling, a situation, a purpose
and then take the first steps towards it,
modifying it and course correcting,
as you go.
Allowing yourself and others around you
to enjoy the ride along the way.
When you hit obstacles,
as you will inevitably go astray,
You can embrace the gifts and challenges
as part of the great adventure of life.
But you know that whatever happens
you’ve been in it and you’ve lived it feeling it fully.
As Henry Miller says
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
Which way do you want to live?
Which way are you living?
Could you do with some course correction?
x
eilish