I spent a lot of this past summer on the road. I mean – A LOT. And, I’m not even counting the beautiful trip abroad that warrants its own entry.
Late in June we drove from Georgia to Iowa to spend some days finding a place to live here. In that trip, we went from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City to Des Moines to Iowa City to Cedar Rapids. Then back to Georgia. In July, we moved from Georgia to Iowa. In early August, we went from Iowa to Kentucky and back to pick up youngest son. The end of August found me on the road taking middle son to college in Pennsylvania; then, back home and back to work.
Just today, as a function of my job, I put over two hundred miles on my car driving to two schools and to one of the agency facilities from which I work.
Yes, I’ve seen lots of roads this summer. You know what I’ve noticed?
There’s construction out there. I believe the reports that our infrastructure is crumbling, but while it crumbles there are groups of men and women all over the nation trying to gird it up. Here’s the thing I noticed about construction and driving: I don’t mind waiting in construction traffic if work is actually being done. I understand the need for road cordoned off for no apparent reason until you approach the crew, and you note that the long stretch where nothing was being done is actually a buffer for people who are doing a job I would never want to do much less be able to do: repairing bridges and roads.
The same is true in life. There are times when we cordon off parts of our lives because we need to repair them. We need to recover from a bad relationship; we quit dating. We need to nurture ourselves after a loss; we don’t go out much. We need to focus energy on building up a skill set; we go to the gym lots or garden lots or write lots. Precious else gets done when we shut down our roads to repair or build ourselves up. Eventually, though, our roads are repaired and they reopen.
The thing that pisses me off is when you’re driving down the road, as I was this past weekend, and the two lane highway becomes a one lane highway. There were cones tall and skinny and short and fat blocking three four-mile stretches on I-80 between Iowa City and Des Moines. I waited for it.
I knew that workers need their space for safety. I also knew it was the weekend, and it was likely that there weren’t actually any workers, but I would see where they were shoring up the highways and byways that I had used so much this year.
Nope.
There was no machinery. No workers. No sandy gravelly area where cement or asphalt would soon be poured and smoothed. Nothing. Just a blank, empty lane of a highway. No work being done. No activity whatsoever.
Have you ever met such people? They are shut down and tuned out. Whole avenues in their lives have been blocked off, but there’s no evidence of work being done. Everything appears usable. It seems like it all works. But they have this shut-off area that may or may not ever reopen.
Such people are traveling through life, but perhaps not traveling well. Maybe they put up the cones for defense. Maybe they guard their cones jealously, afraid others will trample them. Perhaps they put up the cones so long ago that they forgot all about them.
I am thankful for the travels I had this summer. I am thankful that middle son drove most of them. (I miss you!) I am thankful for the travels I am having now. But more than all of that, I look around, and I realize while sometimes I’ve had cones up because things were being repaired, there have been time when the road has simply been closed – for no good reason. And, in those instances, I’m thankful for friends and family (you know who you are) who stopped their cars, got out, and helped me reopen those stretches of road.
The metaphor has gone a bit stale at this point, so I’ll leave you with this lyric from Rascal Flatts: “Life is a highway; I wanna ride it all night long. If you’re going my way, I wanna drive it all night long.”
Take down the unnecessary cones. Open up the possibilities. Use both lanes. Keep going.
