While engaged in conversation enroute to a specific destination, I became engaged enough to miss the expected left turn. When queried by my passenger about whether we were still planning on going to the original destination, I light-heartedly remarked, “Yes, we’re taking the scenic route.”
Taking the next left turn, onto a street I don’t think I have ever been on before, there was a front yard decked out in a multitude of flower beds. Scenic indeed.
Missing a turn in life is not all that unusual. Sometimes we even invest such a miss with huge consequences. Generally we note a missed turn as an encounter with fate, and a negative encounter at that. Blame is easy to come by. Somehow we attach more significance to the downside of a mistake than we do to a serendipity.
To rebalance our responses, it might be we need practice in taking a GPS sigh of “Recalculating” and turning it in a choice we have made to take the scenic route. Trusting the encounters with life (including death) means that there is joy to be had off-the-beaten path. A “road less taken” is no less capable of bringing the Delight-of-the-Day than is a regular route. In fact it may more counted on than finding our routine has hidden the scenic just behind plain sight.
This is not an Algerian seizing-of-the-bootstraps. Claiming we are on scenic route keeps us more securely on the Beauty Way.
Compassion fatigue is real. So is beauty fatigue. A periodic reaffirmation that a misstep can be redefined is a significant spiritual practice — When you stumble across today’s next rose, doff your hat to it, and carry its memory into any designated destination you find yourself returned to.
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