pull ahead and press the help button

I was driving through the Chicago area recently and saw this sign at one of the toll booths.

This is the closest thing to a user manual for modern life that I've ever been able to find.

A few days later I was driving with the aid of a GPS device for the first time.

As someone who could be labeled as geographically challenged if I believed in labels, this experience was truly life-altering. For the first time ever, it was virtually guaranteed that I would make it to my destination (this one in a new-to-me place) and back without getting turned around, wasting time or questioning my ability to reason.

Orientation on this plane of existence takes on radically opposite frames of reference in my head. Maps are simply upside down. If I think I should be going right, I might as well just go left to save myself the hassle of having to turn around and do it anyway five minutes later.

This miraculous gadget could be rescuing my behind on a regular basis, and I marveled at how I hadn't even considered purchasing one of these doohickeys of my own before.

Hmmmmmm. That dismissal, that skepticism--it felt so familiar.

Oh yeah. Like the degree to which people in general resist trusting their own emotions and the vital information that is available from them.

It is so ingrained in this culture to go along to get along that we don't even notice anymore when our desires are ignored, when what would make us happy seems impossible, that it's actually an option to have what we want.

That would just be selfish.

Actually it requires huge amounts of accountability and self-discipline, which often get interpreted as selfishness, but I digress.

I remember a time when I couldn't name the emotion I was having, I'd buried them all so deep in an act of self-preservation, or so I thought.

I remember how difficult it was to relearn to trust myself and my decision-making process. Nothing had turned out for me up until that point, so why should it now?

I remember thinking that it was a waste of time to think about, much less follow, my dreams.

I remember not understanding how I might successfully navigate my day-to-day and my year-to-year.

But I did figure out how to tell what emotion I was having, and why, and what it was telling me. And I did relearn to trust myself to be true to myself  with what was important to me. And I did decide that not following my dreams would mean simply that I had gotten busy dying instead of living.

One of the amazing things about a GPS? It automatically begins to recalculate your route when you change your mind about where you're going.

It doesn't say, "Sorry, you said you were going there, so you're stuck with that decision now."

It objectively points the way to the new destination, no judgments, no second-guessing your motives.

Just like our emotions. If we'd let them.

Go ahead. Pull ahead and press the help button.

Comments

[blissmonger]

Thanks for commenting, Kari. It is deceptively simple. We just make it seem deceptively complex :-)

[Kari Goelz]

This is so simple...just brings you right back to center! Thank you for sharing...

[Karen]

how to assist, lead the way,
provide support, watch your back!

[Blissmonger]

Now if we could just reprogram our self-talk to be equally as magnanimous :-)

[Karen]

love the auto recalc on the way to the destination! WOW we have a TomTom, and I love that even if I miss the turn, I can wait a min and the thing tells me the next turn to take to STILL get me where I'm going. I never thought of it until you said so: that it simply assists the process Without Judgment, Without Chastisement, Without Saying I Told You To Go The Other Way !!!!!

or if you simply pick another destination, it simply says: ok. go. and here's how!

how NOT to be a nag! woo hoo.