As I drive down the interstate toward Knoxville, I am caught
in my thoughts about the inbound traffic directly to my left.
As the cars have
piled up, four lanes wide and going on eight or nine miles now, I began to
think about what those people think about as they poke along the highway.
The
interesting thing is as the newcomers approach the traffic jam, they have no
idea of what is in store in front of them. I on the other hand, know full well
what is in store for them, because I just spent the last several minutes
driving past it. Multiple accidents, police lights, wrecker trucks and lots of
people pulled over every which way.
That
got me thinking about life. My life.
Your life.
We don’t know what is ahead of us, but yet we join the traffic
in an effort to move forward in our life toward our destination. We don’t know how long it will take us to get
there. And we don’t know any of the future barriers that could try and get in
the way of us reaching our destination.
It doesn’t stop us though. We still get
in the car, put on our seatbelt, crank up the music and drive. We do it every
single day. We wake up with hopes and dreams about what is in store for our day
today.
We don’t know any more about our journey today then we knew yesterday.
Well, that’s not entirely so. Yesterday is behind us and we can now see the
good decisions and the poor decisions that we made that may or may not
contribute to today’s journey. That’s part of the human experience. Journeying
out, venturing into unknown territory.
Risk is involved and there is no way to
get away from it.
That leaves us largely dependent upon our society around us.
There is no way to get away from that either; however, it is our responsibility
to decide what avenues to take.
Boundary setting is one such avenue. A healthy
set of boundaries about what is allowable and what is not will help us
determine what type of decision we want to make on our journey today. And just
like the people driving in inbound traffic, we are on a journey of outbound traffic.
The journey is still ahead. The signs are posted. The choices are there. It is
up to us to put our foot on the pedal and drive. If we take a wrong turn, turn around.
If we can’t turn around, we can get off at the next exit.
In either instance, we
will have multiple opportunities to change the course of our day.
Enjoy the
ride, life is about the journey.
