Who wants to go exploring?

I recently was on a flight from Syracuse to Chicago and, as I am prone to do, struck up a conversation with my neighbor.  His name was Joe and he’s a good man.  If interested, you can learn more about Joe and read all about how we became airplane friends here.  However, there was one piece of our conversation that got me thinking. Joe was a truck driver for a significant part of his life.  He used to drive 18-wheelers hauling food products to grocery stores around the country.  I told him that must have been a pretty cool way to see a lot of the USA!  I then asked if he had any favorite small towns that he came across or that he loved to stop in.  He said, “Sadly my truck was so big I couldn’t really do any exploring, and I was usually on a time schedule.”

Joe has driven through nearly every state in the lower 48 and is basically a walking map.  That day I was on my way to Macomb, Illinois, I told him where I was headed and he named the Interstate it was off.  It was pretty impressive.  Unfortunately though, Joe knows the giant grid-like pattern of our country’s interstate system but he has no idea what’s in the boxes…he only knows the lines.So often in our lives we are looking for the fastest way to do something.  In the technology and medical fields, that’s wonderful.  But in the story arch of our lives, it is unfortunate.  A lot of us say things like, “well if I can just get X then I can do Y and then my life will be good.” 

Alas, accomplishment and fulfillment are not the same thing.

A lot of people are like Joe.  Let’s do a plug and play to prove it.  Think about where you are in your life and fill the blanks in this sentence:

“Sadly my ____________ is/are so big I can’t really ___________ and I don’t really have time either.”

Joe filled those blanks in with “truck” and “explore.”  How many of you would fill the first blank in with “excuses” or “fear” and the second blank with “start a business,” or “commit to a relationship,” or “go on auditions,” or “be a better parent/sibling/child/employee/supervisor?”

We all are great at telling ourselves reasons why things we want would not work out.   Over time we truly convince ourselves of that and we get stuck.  So we need to start making our trucks smaller and taking bigger risks because our trucks can go a lot of places, it’s our minds that hit the breaks.

Think about these questions:  When was the last time you got lost?  When was the last time you allowed yourself to sit in the unknown and just be?  When was the last time took a chance?  Who was the last stranger you struck up a conversation with?  When was the last time you did NOT put pressure on yourself to have it all figured out? When was the last time you tried something you were scared of?  When was the last time you explored?

You have time for what you make time for.  So get in your truck, get off the lines and explore the boxes.  And if you’re feeling stuck, let’s talk about it because we can all help each other.