Larry Elder said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” How many of us have a bunch of wishes that are nothing but wishes and become nothing more than wishes? As time goes on we get tired of wishing because they come to nothing more than wishes. We assume that wishes remain only that and that they are not capable of being moved from the vague and misty transparency of wishes to an actual reality. Wishes are just that . . . wishes; the hope of something more that will never be anything other than a hope. Then we forgo the whole wonderful idea of dreaming and we settle for the scrapes that life tosses at us.
We end up in the traffic of life; the molasses-moving, pathetically congested, ever-frustrating right lane of traffic. Once we’re in the traffic of life and we’re firmly in the right lane we set our speed to whatever the traffic around us is. Whatever the life in front of us is doing, that’s what we end up doing. Our cadence is determined by the bumper that we’re riding in front of us, and the one that’s riding us in the rear. We become a link in a long progression that settles into a methodical flow that devolves from going from one place to another. We end up doing nothing more than just maintaining some sort of general movement that eventually becomes all about the movement and has nothing whatsoever to do with a destination of any kind.
And so, we eventually develop the driving styles of those around us. In time we’re moving along in some sort of mediocre line of life’s right lane, isolated and hemmed in less by the traffic itself and a whole lot more by the routines that we’ve developed in being in the traffic. Sure, we’re headed somewhere, but we’re poking and plodding along as a small part of the traffic around us and not as people who are called to great destinations. The line of people that make up this traffic extends out beyond the horizon of our sight, leaving us with the sense that we’ve just got to sit it out and let it work itself out. How tragic.
Eventually we forget our destination altogether because our entire focus is in keeping in pace with the traffic. We’re paying so much attention to the stuff in the right lane that all we’re doing is paying attention to the stuff in the right lane. Life becomes all about navigating the traffic. It’s all about watching the traffic and forgetting to ask why we’re in the traffic at all. When that happens, it’s indicative of the fact that we’ve forgotten our destination altogether. Our focus becomes driving down whatever road we’re driving down, and our goal becomes navigating the road for the sake of navigating the road. In time, the right lane of life is all that we see and ultimately all that we know. The left lane is entirely forgotten, so much so that we have forgotten the fact that it exists at all.
The Left Lane
There’s something freer in the left lane of life. The left lane is the place where we go when the simple cadence and average speed becomes irritating or altogether intolerable. The left lane is where we have a greater sense of a larger goal, and a lesser sense that life is about pacing ourselves based on everyone else. There’s a responsible aggressiveness in the left lane; not a foolish type of aggression, but an aggression that’s borne out of a refusal to bend to mediocrity and kneel to the status quo. There’s a sense that life can open up when all that we see is congestion; whether that’s the congestion that other people create in our lives or the congestion that we’re so prone to create in our own heads.
The Conviction of Desire
In her now classic bit of prose, Helen Keller wrote, “It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.” Left lane living is fueled by desire . . . passionate desire. It’s a relentless desire; an unforgiving desire that will constantly pound on the door of our hearts until we grant it the complete entrance into our hearts that it demands. It’s a rightly obstinate and persistently ruthless sort of passion that will not permit the plodding cadence of right lane living. Desire demands what desire itself desires, and that is the expenditure of every drop of lifeblood in the life-giving pursuit of life itself. It’s about the outright rejection of compromise. It’s about the outlandish confrontation of any attitude, plan, destination or emaciated goal that would do anything other than demand the fullness of our abilities and the totality of our allegiances.
That kind of desire thrusts us into the left lane of our lives. With desire, we can’t be any place else. The right lane of life becomes entirely insufferable. Driving along keeping a weather eye on plodding life in front of us with constant attention to the other plodding life behind us as tightly reflected in our tiny rearview mirrors becomes dreadful. In time it will become completely unbearable, focusing us to seize the wheel and swerve out of the timid, double-lined right lane of our lives and roar into the momentum of the left lane.
The Power of Passion
If desire is what drives us to wrench ourselves out of the right lane and careen into the life lane, passion is the accelerator. Alexander Pope wrote that “on life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.” Passion is the wind in our sails that blows in gale force. It’s that unyielding and obstinate thing that will not cease despite the fact that we often keep the mainsails of our lives wrapped tight by the rigging of fear and the lanyards of practicality. Passion is the power that either drives, drags or throws us forward with the momentum generated by its inexhaustible energy.
We can stay in the right lane and just let it blow by us, wondering what in the world that was. We can it more as something of an annoyance that blows through the calm of our mediocrity, causing us some degree of consternation about something that seems so intrusive. Or, we can recognize if for what it is, let it fully fuel our lives and throw us forward in the left lane of life. We can bring all of the resources that we have together in order to harness the whole of it and be thrust forward toward horizon after horizon after horizon.
Which Lane?
One final thought that we didn’t entertain. That is the fact that sometimes we’re not in the right lane, nor are we in the left lane. Sometimes were not on the road at all. Sometimes we’ve just chosen to wait it out, thinking that the road will lighten up at some point and present us with a more favorable journey. For those of us who are these people, we’ll probably never get on the road at all. And that is the most tragic journey I can think of.
Craig Lounsbrough
M. Div., LPC