One summer, at August’s end, I accompanied my brother, as he drove my nephew, bag and baggage, to Boston University, for his sophomore year. The conditions at the university were quite chaotic, as students and parents were everywhere carting belongings up staircases and elevators, to deliver all to specified dorm rooms.
When the day was done, and all the transfer of person and property complete; we said our good-byes to my nephew, with hugs and well-wishes, then headed back to Connecticut. After stopping for a bite to eat, just outside Boston, we continued our trip home.
As we were driving and talking about the day, we became uncomfortably aware that we were going in the wrong direction. What gave it away, were the prominent signs for Lexington and Concord. I remembered enough of my studies of the American Revolution, to know that, the battles of Lexington and Concord were not fought in Connecticut. Our inattention to the road signs, added an hour to our travels, which at the outset had us headed to a destination not intended.
We who are not paying attention to signs provided for proper direction, or unaware of a sign masked by something that obstructed it from our view; can only assume we are on the right road. In time we discover our assumption is wrong. And due to incorrect assumptions we have, in frustration, wasted time and energy in the pursuit of our true goal; which is arriving at our prescribed destination. Which one can not accomplish when on the wrong road.
Our misguidance is made know to us, by a sense that things just don’t seem to be right. What seems to be in order is, in reality, out-of-order. By following accurate signs, in good faith, our trip leads to an ordered end. By following, in the same good faith, inaccurate signs, or missing accurate signs, because they have been obscured by accident or by design, we are led to a disordered end.
My next post, “Food For Thought,” which will be available on September 15, 2014, shall further pursue this notion of traveling on wrong roads. What one will discover is that making a wrong turn, by choice or hoodwink, has implications far beyond those experienced by the individual.
CROSSROADS-Right Choices 