Experience
The REST of the week #103
It’s the rest of the week. How about taking a break from learning your lesson?
There’s a place for “learning your lesson”—for owning a mistake and redeeming it by turning it into a guidepost for better behavior in the future.
However, scrutinizing your daily tasks through the lens of lesson learning can be exhausting and even discouraging because it puts you in performance mode with an unspoken expectation of perfection.
What if we went through the day gathering knowledge instead? Absorbing and digesting our experiences in a context broader than the spotlight of constant critique?
Last Thursday I was scheduled to see a patient at 9 am, so I left with exactly 30 minutes to get there—allowing for one minute of wiggle room for a timely arrival.
I’m not sure where it comes from, but I have this drive to wait until the very last moment to walk out the door for any kind of appointment. Do I feel like it’s a waste of time to arrive early?
I don’t know.
I am happily married to a man who likes his margins with these things. After 25 years of letting him take the lead on departure times to the airport, I have experienced (and come to appreciate) the luxury of extra time to actually lounge in the airport lounge before the mad rush to line up at the gate.
It’s very peaceful. Restful.
But this practice of arriving with time to spare has not yet influenced my comings and goings for personal appointments. So, last Thursday found me running on the late side, hoping for green lights and complaining about the new construction. Respecting the speed limit and the deteriorating transmission in our old Odessy (with over 300,000 miles on the odometer), I checked in with the GPS to see which route would be fastest and took it.
As I got closer to work, the GPS voice told me to continue straight where I would normally turn right. The ETA predicted a 3 minute late arrival and I was not having it.
(Do you ever talk back to your phone?)
“Nope, I’m not going that way.” I said to the robot voice. I knew the route suggested and it was decidedly longer.
As I turned onto the usual street, I noticed a “Road Closed” sign tossed onto the grass at the corner. Mystery solved—the road must have been closed, hence the strange directions. But, clearly, it was open again because there were cars turning off from it, and the sign was down.
As I progressed, my ETA went from 9:03 to 9:04 … all the way to 9:07—and that’s when I saw it—the actual blocked road—2 blocks from the entrance to work.
So I turned around and followed the GPS.
And here’s the amazing thing—I was not frustrated, stressed out, or mad at myself for not just trusting the GPS or for not figuring out that cars on the road don’t necessarily mean that the road is open all the way to the end.
Striving was replaced by a spirit of adventure and a sense that I was accumulating experience that could serve me well in the future. And I truly believed in my heart of hearts that rushed worrying wouldn’t do a thing to turn back the clock.
Let’s keep choosing rest.
And may your rest be sweet.
Alicia