“Life is a highway”. Perhaps that’s why I love roadtrips so much – they are a literal expression of the existential journey we are on.
We pass through places or phases, things go wrong and we fix them, sometimes we are elated and sometimes we feel (or actually literally are) deeply, deeply lost.
A key lesson I’ve learned recently is to let go of resistance to what is going on in my life. The lesson was two-pronged: (1) my family has been through some challenges as my father ages and my eldest half-brother has a full-blown meltdown causing the rest of the family lots of worry and stress, and (2) I was travelling way more than I thought was good for me.
I had all kinds of ideas about how much better things would be if I was just sitting still, in one place, and if my half-brother would just disappear.
Soon or later (ok it was much later), I realized that gripping fiercely to a desire for things to be different to how they actually are, is a recipe for discontent.
The gap between what I wanted and what was actually happening made me angry and tired. And it was a gap I created.
By not accepting the situation, I was killing my own buzz. Thankfully, since I decided to stop resisting the flow, I have felt much happier, lighter and energetic. All of this makes me a better friend, partner, coach and person.
I suspect this a lesson that I will be confronted with further down the highway too. Next time, I’ll hopefully be a little quicker on the uptake.