Your long, strange trip
- John DeSantis
- Feb 6, 2020
- 2 min read
Keep your eyes on your road, keep your mind and focus on the car you're traveling in on this journey with and its passengers: your partner, your kids, and the other key members of your tribe, be it friends and/or family. We're all on our journeys, it's all one big highway, we're in our car watching the other cars around us, some seemingly zooming by us, others cruising behind in the right lane. This surrounding traffic is irrelevant to our own journey. You never truly know what kind of road someone is on, whether theirs seems any easier or harder than yours.
What should remain in the forefront of your mind is how you can make your journey the best one possible for you and your passengers. This doesn’t mean to not care about the world around you or what’s going on in it, but to just not get hung up on the negativity that might creep in when you compare your own situation to someone else’s. Figuratively, it’s not a worthy use of your time and energy to get hung up on worry of where you are in comparison to the other cars on the road. This can apply to all of us, with or without kids.
If you think you have problems or are disenchanted by the bumps along the way, look back and tally up all the blessings and good fortune that got you to that point in time. Or keep your eyes on what’s ahead. There are a myriad of things that can cause our engines to break down on the side of the road: problems with your kids, strained relationships, sensing a lack of purpose, illness, even death of loved ones. But as long as you're here you're still on your journey, so you owe it to yourself and your passengers to enjoy the sights and experiences along the way. Sure we can reminisce on the past or revisit it for fond memories and life lessons, but living there will keep you from those memories you could be making today.
Everyone around you has their own journey with these pitfalls and triumphs in the flow of the traffic. That doesn't make your respective trips of any less importance, it just means you don't need to keep an eye on their fuel gauge and mileage until the next oil change; your vehicle should be your focus. After all, you only have this one ride to see these sights as they appear today.
Your kids will grow, they will change, they will experience a journey of their own. While you may travel on these familiar roads again, they'll be different with new landmarks or locations replacing older ones the next time you pass through. Try not to stress about the other journeys you can see off in the distance, nothing can possibly be better in this moment than now. Sometimes nothing can be worse in those moments either, but in those times you and your passengers will need each other more than ever.
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