I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to be without a direction. I like to know where I’m going, what my plan is when I get there, and how it will all turn out in the end.  I like maps, and I tend to panic when lost (which unfortunately happens easily!)

One summer I was driving home from a fabulous conference in Boulder, Colorado, trying to sort out my thoughts of how I would incorporate the new information into my work.  I had been told by “locals” that if I took a particular road, it would turn into the highway I had arrived on, which would then put me back on the main highway toward home (Fort Collins).  I was told I “couldn’t miss it”. I put on my newly acquired “Sounds of Peace” CD and started driving, reflecting back on the conference.

Soon, I realized that the road had not turned into the familiar highway route.  It was all very scenic and moving quickly, but it wasn’t where I was expecting to be.  I was already nervous because on the way out to Boulder, my car had developed a bad case of the shakes whenever it got up to highway speeds, which I had forgotten until I was driving again. What if it broke down in the middle of nowhere? I frantically searched for a map in the glove compartment at each red light, but none was to be found.  I was anxious to get home not too much later than the time I had promised my childcare, and I had already left later than I intended.  As someone who was once lost for over three hours in one small stretch of California’s Bay Area (they had renamed the freeways since my old map was printed, but that’s another story), you can probably believe that my tension was rapidly rising.  I really wanted to find the map!

Suddenly, I looked up and noticed—for some reason I always forget this!— that my car has a built-in compass.  I was going north; and Fort Collins is northeast of Boulder.  I forced myself to take a breath, and trust that I was going in the right direction and would be alright without a map.

Once I began to breathe, I noticed that the road I was on was much prettier than the one I I had arrived on.  It gave me a gorgeous view of the mountains that I hadn’t seen before.  Every time I got anxious, I looked up and checked the compass.  When the road came to a “T”, I turned east, and drove through beautiful farms and pastures of horses, the foliage and pastures green and lush from recent rains.  “Sounds of Peace” was still playing in the background, and I could hear it again.  I spend quite a bit of time enjoying the drive.

At one point, I came to an intersection with a familiar road from my trip out to the east, but a clear sign to “Fort Collins” pointed north.  My compass wasn’t any help here as I was still bound northeast. Even though I was drawn to the eastbound road, I figured the people that make the signs must know more than me and took the road north.

This was a mistake – I wound through a slow, old town going 25 mph, and all the lights were against me. It was vexing, but I was stuck – it wasn’t worth going back as I knew that it would open up at some point, which it did.  After a while I was able to get back on the main highway and head for home.

I learned from this experience that I don’t always need a map; that I can simply trust my compass. Rarely in life are we given a map.  However I believe we each have a built-in compass, if we choose to see it through the cloud of anxiety and fear. We can check-in with our compass when we feel anxious, and make sure we are going in the right direction. Sometimes we have to trust that our compass will guide us, even though we can only see a little of the road before us.

Sometimes others think they know what our road should be.  We have to take this with consideration but in the end it is our own decision to make.  Our compass may be an internal knowing or a connection with a higher power. 

Sometimes, after we have done what we can to choose wisely what road we want to be on, we will end up the wrong road anyway for a time.  We have to work our way back onto the right one, though it may not be comfortable or easy.  I learned that the journey is not always going to be as fast as I would imagine or prefer.

Mostly importantly, though, I was reminded that often the road is just as important as the destination.   We can fill this time with anxiety and frustration, a single-minded focus on an objective, or we can fill it with sounds of peace, green lush pastures, and yes, sometimes old, slow towns.

I made it home safe and sound, despite the shaking car, to find my son happily involved in an activity.  I was only 15 minutes late, and they didn’t even notice.

Later I found that my tires were so badly worn (albeit prematurely and inexplicably) that the car shop told me I was lucky they had lasted that long, and instructed me to drive immediately, and very slowly, back to the shop that had installed them.

Lisa Stroyan