Looking For Direction

What would you do if you knew you would not fail?
 
Recently I heard this quote and it has taken root in my brain. I have thought a lot about roads in my life that I turned off of, afraid that I would never see the end of the street. If I knew I wouldn’t fail though, I would still be trudging down some of them, my hopes high and my worries light.
 
Life is not like this though and so I’ve been thinking about various incidents  in my life, how they have changed me and how changing my behavior would have changed my life.
 
A couple of years ago, McDaddy received an early Christmas present. The McInLaws and I went together to purchase a TomTom GPS System. For those of you living under a rock wondering what a TomTom is… it is the smart choice in personal navigation. In other words, this system when plugged into a vehicle can navigate you to any destination in the US, England or Canada. On a recent trip, this new loyal friend guided us from our drive-way right to the door of our destination. She was a little peeved when we missed a turn, and then again when we turned into a scrapbook store parking lot to kill time because we arrived a little early. It didn’t know our plans had changed and she became increasingly agitated.

She needs to take a chill pill.
 
I thought about this little system, and its benefits to me if I could hook the thing up to my brain. It would give me a swift kick in the tail when I was about to turn onto a wrong road. Not that I have a miserable life, but because I can use all the help I can get. For instance, if I had a TomTom, I would not open my mouth to say the wrong thing because my loyal friend would be there to tell me I was about to make a wrong turn. He would save me the guilt I would feel afterward and save the poor soul I offended the reason to be offended. 

Seriously, I’m working on it.
 
I can think of at least two people right off the top of my head that could have benefitted from TomToms services in the past month. These two people have made decisions that have significantly changed the way people viewed them and its my belief a little navigation on their part could have avoided the crash courses they caused.
 
Oh….. and when I didn’t comlete my Graduate School thesis, TomTom would have been there to guide me along the road to see that I finished that silly thing so I wouldn’t have failure looming over my head. I would also know that the quote, “What would you do if you knew you would not fail” had a lot more meaning to me than I would  like to admit. You see, I have failed. My thesis is nothing more than words on my computer hard drive now. I have no intention of finishing and quite frankly, I am sometimes sorry that I even started grad school, because now I have to admit that I have unfinished business. I have no desire to finish now…but, the end result is still the same no matter what my intentions are at this point. I could list all the reasons why I didn’t finish the thesis – entitled “Gun Use in West Virginia Domestic Violence Cases,” but seriously, who even cares about that anyway. I wanted to write a thesis on something cool like murder or meyhem, but, the chair of my thesis committee had other ideas.

I have other ideas about him now too, but, that’s a whole ’nother blog.
 
If TomTom would have been on the job back then, he would have told me to back myself up, pick my own thesis topic and drive quickly to the end of the trail to get it finished. My grad school days did produce a group of great friends and provided me with lots of knowledge about Criminology, Statistics, Criminal law, Grant Writing and Counseling. If nothing else, I sure learned how to be a criminal during my academic pursuit at Marshall University Graduate School. The really sad part is that I was at the end of the road ready to pull into Masters Avenue and my thesis was not and is not as of this date finished. TomTom sure could have aided me in making a different turn to make those two years really mean something. Its all water under the bridge now and TomTom has rerouted me. Its not always easy to forget though and I’ve not forgotten it, even after eleven years. I have other interests in life now and couldn’t say with 100% clarity that I would finish it if I had the chance to go back. Instead of focusing on that, I will spend the next howevermany years routing myself down roads that will have significance in my life – raising my boys, nurturing my marriage and maybe even going back to work when my sweet angels are both in school. 

I am proud of what I have achieved and would like to think that I’ve learned something from the navigation system of my life. I’ve learned that its not always about the destination. There are so many wonderful things to see on the route, if your too involved in the destination you may miss out on the chance to make friends, change your course or learn something. I’ve learned this the hard way.  Winston Churchill once said, Failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts…. I will continue to focus on the road ahead of me and not look back down that long road I turned off of eleven years ago.
 
When you find yourself on the WRONG road, take advice from your internal  TomTom – at the next intersection make a RIGHT turn.

Tagged as: Drivers, inlaws, McDaddy, Motherhood