At exactly 6.05 a.m., I woke up the girls! 6.29 a.m. – breakfast served. Egg and muffin it was, no time for a ceremonious full English breakfast! 7.01 a.m.– all four of us: my three girls including myself were already in the car! I planned to leave Carlisle (North of England) at exactly 7.25 a.m. So I set aside 24 colossal minutes to meticulously input my destination coordinates into my GPS.
GPS devices– they have taken control of roads today just like their distant cousins (tablets) have taken control of our life today. They have certainly replaced the paper maps – our ex light house at sea!
There are many things I don’t like on the road: the ramps, the forks, the roundabouts – entry and exit, the sharp corners, the descents and ascents, and even the signs– keep left, turn right, junction numbers and exits. They are all intended as guides to my destination but they only end up confusing me! So easy to see folks– I am directionally challenged! People like me struggle with maps! So I keenly embraced the GPS when it took the place of maps on road.
I have only written of the monsters in my road, let me write a little about the devil in my GPS. After computing my coordinates, I pulled out from the garage at 7.15a.m– scheduled to arrive at my destination (London, South of England) 3.15 p.m. Turn by turn, fork by fork, ramp by ramp, and exit by exit, I laboured all along to maintain that harmony between the road and my GPS. I had travelled over 120 miles supposedly down south and the next instruction my GPS dished out was to exit the motor way. After travelling 10 minutes on my exit, my GPS declared– you have now reached your destination! Dazed! I took a glance at my wife, she was sitting next to me. Right in front of us there is a 3 by 3 feet wooden gate; it was the entrance to a FARM HOUSE! Then again, as if to annoy me more, my GPS reiterated: you have now reached your destination! Well, I just spent 2 hours of my time attempting to get down south by going north!!! I was road dumb! You can blame the GPS!
I was so fixated on my destination so much that I paid little attention to the road ahead, its landmarks, and the road signs – all tell-tale signs of my positioning on the road.
Destination Freaks
You can blame the GPS for indulging a generation of people like me, people so obsessed about our destination that we give so little regard to the road that lies ahead of us. Destination freaks you may call us! We X mark two points A —— B. We get obsessed about the X and forget about the connection– the road!
Well, our journey is simply not all about our destination. It is what happens between points A and B. It is about the wonderful choices we make. The courage we display at each junction, at each fork, each turn and intersection in our road. It is about the fortitude and character we develop that helps us embrace our road and all that lies in it. It is not always easy to ply our road in life, and sometimes we feel we are lost when we look around us. We get so scared to take the next bend. We wonder what the next junction holds; we develop a phobia for the road we travel. We pull up a-times by the road shoulder and wonder how we have ended up on this road– our road! At this moment we take a look at our map and search desperately to see if other people’s road will lead to our destination! But then we hear that small still voice saying: ‘…Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls’.
Worship your road, not your destination
Your road: its exits, the forks in it, the junctions and signs are all set in stone on the divine map. When you follow this map your destination becomes your destiny, for your life’s script has been written by the divine Author Himself. We all have our own roads, mine is different from yours. Your exit isn’t my exit. My junction is different from yours. My destination; my destiny, isn’t the same as yours. It is your own road after all! The junctions, the exits, the sharp corners, the potholes, forks, the signs, no matter how confusing and intimidating they look; they are part of the road to your destination, your destiny! There is a reason God does life that way!
My road is meant to be worshipped and loved; not just my destination, for the means justifies the end – seriously, not the other way round! Why do people labour so hard to climb mountain Everest if they can easily be dropped at its peak? It is not for the adulation because you get that at the peak. It is the climbing that makes you worthy of that peak. Your road makes you worthy of your destination, so embrace it: fork, potholes and exits!
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