Getting Off Course

A good friend was recently telling me that she got just a bit lost while on a road trip. It was for a very short period of time and she was soon back on the road that she meant to be on. She had been in a more rural area at the time, so while on the wrong road she happened to see both goats and guineafowl, which she said she hadn’t seen in a long time. If she’d remained on the correct road, she would have missed them.

When I started this blog I knew that I wanted to write about my own path, but also to point out that everyone has to follow their own individual path. I also believe that we need to have some ideas about where it is we want to be going and use that to plan the trip. Sometimes, we may get a bit lost, but if we know where we want to go, then we can find our way back to the road we intended to be on, or maybe a different way to get to our intended destination.

A year ago, I didn’t expect to be on this road and I’ve spent the past few months trying to find my way back on to the path that I want to be on.  It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean turning around and retracing my steps, but rather finding another way to get to that road, still keeping my destination – my vision for the life that I want to lead and the person I want to be – in mind.

I know that I need to change how I go about getting there. I need to travel with more self-compassion, with more acceptance of feedback from others and more willingness to say “I don’t know” (without internalizing both as “I’m not good enough”),  and with more attention to the things that are going well.

Right now I’m off the path that I want to be on, trying to find my way back, but along the way, I’m watching for the guineafowl and any of the other beautiful things I might have missed if I hadn’t gotten off course. I’m looking for and taking heart in the new things I’m learning, the evidence of true friendship that I’m seeing, and the growing proof of just how strong I am.

Getting off course doesn’t have to be all bad. Remember that the next time you accidentally make a wrong turn and watch for what you may have otherwise missed.