Time to Change Course
I absolutely loved my bike ride into town today. I road to a different coffee shop - 28 miles - my longest ride yet to blog. I feel pretty proud of myself!
On my way in, a beautiful, big doe leaped across the road in front of me, a dragonfly flew beside me, and the birds dipped, soared, and cheered me on with their melodies. Nothing compares to being out in nature.
Because this was a new route, I was relying on the GPS on my phone. At one point, still way out in the countryside, I came upon a train track with the lights and sounds and the arms out to stop traffic. On the track was a long train - except there was one problem. The train wasn’t moving. I stopped my bike and waited, totally perplexed. What the heck? I looked around for signs of future movement. Nothing. A dog barked in the distance. So strange. I waited for a couple of minutes, contemplating crawling under the train and dragging my bike with me, but common sense rolled its eyes at my idea.
New plan. I zoomed out from the map and found that I could go back about half a mile and take a small detour to get back to the road I needed to be on. Shew. I was relieved that it wasn’t too big of a deal. As I turned and cycled away from the roadblock, the railroad crossing signal kept sounding off into the distance. It felt like an eerie mystery that my girls would have been more than delighted to try and solve. ;)
Life itself is a mystery. Even when planning our route, we can’t plan for unexpected roadblocks. Goddamn those roadblocks. Sometimes they just feel inconvenient, and then some days they feel completely defeating. On the other hand, if things always went the way we planned it go, I suppose life would be super boring. It’s the unexpected that keeps us on our toes. It’s the unexpected roadblocks that allow us to use our problem-solving skills.
This is truly an aspect I love about humans: Our ability to assess the situation and come up with a new plan. One of my favorite parts about watching new movies is the point in the movie where the shit hits the fan and suddenly the characters are thrown into a ridiculously impossible situation. Plot twist. You see the panic on their faces as they survey the scene but then you notice an idea pop in their minds. In seconds, the characters change course and miraculously discover a way out of the trap. Success! Thanks to the highly evolved human brain.
Why is it that we can think on our feet so fast? In the words of Britt Frank in her book, “The Science of Stuck”, she reminds us that our brains are wired for survival, not happiness. When it comes to staying alive, we don’t even have to think twice. Our brains kick into superpower mode. People have been known to accomplish crazy, seemingly impossible things in the pursuit of life or keeping their loved ones alive. But when it comes to happiness, well, that is not something we can rely on our survival instinct to help us with. This is an area that takes a lot of discovery, creativity, and effort on our part. We have to first figure out what we want, and then make a road map on how we are going to get there.
Of course, along the way, roadblocks are inevitable. However, as I look back on my journey so far, some of the roadblocks that I ran into ended up forcing me to completely change course. Those decisions have been some of the best decisions in my life. Those unexpected losses guided me to a path much truer to myself. When my two therapeutic riding horses died, it was devastating. I scrambled to try and continue my therapeutic horsemanship business but it became quickly clear that it was time for me to move on to the next adventure.
This is what pushed me to start my nonprofit, Freedom For The Taking. And though it is still very much in the beginning stages, it is the closest thing to peace that I have felt yet. After over 20 years of teaching horsemanship, I had started feeling burnt out but I stayed with it because I was so good at it and I knew I would have work for as long as I wanted to do it. I had felt for the last few years this desire building inside me to do something different but I was too scared to step outside my comfort zone.
Sometimes we need a big wake-up call to shove us out of our familiarity.
Although I do not believe that bad, sad, or devastating things need to happen in order for us to change, I do believe that we have the choice to let the painful things help us reroute. There are always things and always will be things that are out of our control, that will kick our feet out from under us. It’s fucking inevitable and it fucking sucks. One really important thing that I have learned along the way is that even amidst the shitty roadblocks, we still have choices.
This is where our freedom lies - the ability to zoom out, reevaluate, and make a new plan. Yes, sometimes we have to backtrack until we find a different road and that can feel like failure, but it’s absolutely not. It is one of the things that makes us humans so incredible. We don’t quit. Instead, we problem-solve.
Do you know what inspires me the most? Not the people who flow through life with plenty of money and fame and ease. It’s the people who have had a million roadblocks thrown in their path. The ones who when everyone said they couldn’t do it, responded with, “Watch me.”
These are my heroes. The problem solvers.
They are easy to spot. They have taken life to a new level. They don’t just accept the status quo to survive. They thrive. And damn is it beautiful.
Next time your route lands you in front of a huge train that isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon, I hope you remember it might be a great opportunity to change course - or maybe it’s just time for a nice long nap while you wait for the train to move.
Whatever the case, I’m sure you’ll figure it out…because you’re a GPS - aka - goddamn problem solver!
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