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Health & Fitness

Zen and the Art of 'We'll Get There Eventually'

The least exciting distance between two points is a straight line.

“Ma, you Never know where you’re going. You just Zen your way to everything.” 

This cracked me up as I was pulling my second u-turn of this particular trip, because it rang so true.  My daughter is completely right on this point.  I do occasionally look up directions before heading out, but invariably, I figure I’ll remember what I see and don’t print them.  Also, I’m frustrated with the way mapping programs label every blessed bend in the road instead of just saying “follow Route 57 north,” for example.  So I give up relying on preset directions, and yes, Zen my way there.  

Sometimes, this method worries me, especially when I miss turns on the way to places I’ve been one or more times before.  I’ve also been known to completely miss my destination (sometimes by miles or whole towns) if I become immersed in conversation with a passenger or am listening to a good song on the radio. 

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This seems to run in my family, as well.  My brother, who lives in Fairfield County, was supposed to come to my house for dinner one night.  He was very late and finally called to say he was in Pennsylvania! having taken 84 West instead of East, and passing two state lines before realizing his error.  Sense of direction may have been my brother’s problem that night, but it’s usually not mine.  I have a pretty solid sense of cardinal direction (N-E-S-W), but heading in the right general direction doesn’t always help when you encounter one-way roads, dead ends, cliffs, or large bodies of water.

When I calm my worries about memory, I realize it’s really just my personality.  I like getting a little lost. I’m intrigued with what’s around an unseen bend or down a dirt road.  And I absolutely loathe routine.  My job may only be a few miles from home, but I’m pretty sure I’ve taken every possible permutation of a route there, long and short.  When in the woods, I avoid out-and-back routes as the curse of routine, preferring circuitous loops.  Sure a trail appears different in reverse, but I’d rather see something completely new.  Robert Frost’s oft-quoted line about two paths in the wood comes to mind, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”  Taking a lesser-used route is not exactly what I mean to do when I wander.  It’s less important whether others have gone before me and more so that I take the road I’ve never yet traveled myself, and that’s what makes all the difference for me.  

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Whether it’s Zen or some other force of nature, I’m reliably drawn to the wrong turn, and I’m sort of OK with that (though my passengers or followers may not always be).  Traveling the 'creative route' has led to my spending the night hanging by a rope off the side of a cliff, climbing the wrong mountain, shouldering my mountain bike through a waist-deep swamp as night fell, spending another night on a ledge tied to a small bush so I wouldn’t roll off in my sleep--aah, some of the most memorable adventures.  

Why go straight there, when something interesting might happen if we just see what’s over down this way...?

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