It seems that we have some vague and rather ethereal sense of where we’re going in this thing called life. For the more contemplative soul, that sense might be quite refined. For the casual traveler, it might be a bit more nebulous and scattered. In many cases where we’re going is far more rigorously defined by all the places where we don’t want to go, rather than the places where we do want to go. At other times its definition is rather handily shaped by the opinions of others, or it’s carved directly from the bedrock of the value systems that have been built into our lives throughout the whole of our lives. Vague or refined, we all have some sense of where we’re going. And too often, we find ourselves ending up someplace else.
The Detours We Create
Yet, life is not so predictable as to always wind its way to the places that we presumed it to be going. There are those times when where we were going was bafflingly mistaken as some sort of final destination when in reality it was only a step to a final destination. At other times the place where we’re going is really a destination that we had fabricated because the place to which life had originally called us appeared too big, or too far, or too steep, or simply impossible in whatever way our limited vision happened to interpret it. However it might play out, we’re all headed somewhere.
The Detours Life Creates
But then there are those other times when life takes a sharp turn that seems little of our actions, but everything of circumstances designed to kill our journey and crush our destination long before we get within arm’s length of it. And to whatever degree it wrecks the road underneath our feet, we’re left in a blurring trauma that renders our journey disjointed, our destination uncertain, and our lives dispirited.
The Explanation of Detours Missed
Yet, more often than not it’s the not the obvious shifts in our journey that are the core problem. There’s no question that the natural ebb and flow of life, whether it be titanic or miniscule, will happen to us. And so life will fall upon us, or ram against us, or pull the ground out from under us.
Casual and Careless
Yet, more often than not, the explanation doesn’t rest in life having shown up. The much more poignant issue is that too often we are passive, flabby and lax in rigorously living out our lives. And so, we drift without knowing that we’re drifting because we’re no longer paying attention. The outcome of such passive living is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.
Preoccupied with Pabulum
Too often we’re too preoccupied with pabulum. We’re tediously engaged with tiny things and we’re caught in the tedium of minutia because we can gather these things around us and control them when the bigger things are out of our control. We’re caught in small things, and the outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.
Along for the Ride
Frequently we presume that we’re some docile passenger along for a ride that’s going wherever it’s going, so we just let it go to wherever that place is. We freely surrender to passivity which is an invitation to blindness. Assuming we’re on a ride that we can’t direct, the outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.
The Walls of Denial
At other times, we live in the constructed confines erected from the raw material of denial, causing us to live out a life that is in denial of life itself. We become squatters living in a squatter’s camp constructed by the flimsy materials of justification, rationalization, blame-placing and projecting. The outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.
Ending Up Where We Wish to Be
We will end up somewhere. The fact that we have a destination is irrefutable as life is a journey that presents us with no option other than the journey. We may decide that the nature and course of the journey is irrelevant and we may take a backseat to passivity. If we do, we have no right to complain when we end up in some place other than what we may have thought or preferred.
We would be wise to inventory our lives and determine if we are in some way large or small participating in any of these behaviors. If so, we need to root them out and expunge them from our lives. If we don’t, the place we land may not be on any land that we even remotely recognize.
Craig Lounsbrough
M. Div., LPC