Life's journey: annoying detours

My family on a Sunday walk near Adelaide

My desk sullenly welcomes me back; the scattered papers challenge me to clear them; the notepaper gestures for me to think of something creative to write ... but, alas, my sleek laptop seduces me away once more. It lures me to an easier place, a fun-fair on the internet where I prefer to play ... like Pinocchio running from the discipline of school. I know I'll be disappointed later. I'll pay the price for wasting time now. Already, I feel the donkey ears grow on my head ... but still, I lift the smooth dark lid of my computer and I skip through the beckoning gates of youtube.

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I have written little on my blog over the last couple of months; life has got in my way. I’ve been too busy.

Yet, I sit and reflect now; a quieter scene of contemplation in the drama of my existence. I think about life: I see it as a never-ending journey. It continues - always moving forward, waiting for no-one - pulling each of us along major highways and smaller roads towards our imagined dreams of nirvana: the place where we hope to find happiness, security, and contentment. The place we want to settle and rest: Arrived. The journey over.

Yet life’s journey will never be over - at least, not until we take our final breath. Even if we ever found the nirvana we seek, life would not let us stay there - luxuriating in its tranquil gardens, or basking in its lime light for the remainder of our days. Life is nomadic. It is a constantly moving drama filled with both order and chaos - each alternating unpredictably, and over which we have limited control.

Life sweeps us along on its restless journey, whether we want to go or not. It won’t let us settle and stop the constant change; although, it does allow us to create a home - constant and safe. The 'home' of which I speak is no particular physical location; that’s merely geography. The home is one created in our hearts. It exists whenever we are with the ones we love - friends and family: our travelling companions in life with whom we bond and choose to stay close; the ones who help and teach us - and we them - through the darkest and most difficult times; and the ones with whom we laugh with delight - through the wonderful and exciting times.

On this note, it’s interesting - using this philosophical notion about what a home is - to consider what a crushingly disappointing lesson it would be for anyone who mistakenly thought money and fame could replace love and relationships in life. For no house could ever be built large and grand enough to become a home - if it was filled with only furniture and no love or true friendships. It would simply remain an empty space surrounded by walls. Grand or not, that’s all it would ever be. A lonely jail of sorts. Time or fire or wars or cyclones or any number of things would reduce it to rubble, but love would endure through all those traumas.

However, in the journey of our lives, intermittently, and unpredictably, we can be shoved violently from the pleasant and orderly road we thought would be ours for some time - off down some miserable dark alleyway, or onto a lonely and dreary dirt track - leading God only knows where, for God only knows how long. And often this is not a path we wanted. It’s often hard and unpleasant. Also, it rips away from us the road map we’d drawn for our lives, and the timetable we’d set.

Life cares little for our plans or the rush we’re in. We can plan and organise and struggle to get to where we want to in life: Sometimes we’ll  get there. Sometimes life will take us in a completely different direction. And, as we see ourselves torn from the path we’d expected and planned, it can be so hard and scary: Chaos. We are in unexplored territory and we have no maps for where we find ourselves.

Anger, sadness, frustration, pleading … doesn’t work. We are left to learn to deal with the situation, roll with the punches, learn how to cope, look to our life travelling companions. Again. They’ll do the same, when they’re shoved onto difficult paths, soon enough.

During these difficult times, I imagine life is saying to us: 

'Find your way down this new path I have set you on. You can do it. You are stronger than you know. Although, you will need to learn certain lessons, to reach the end, and it won't be easy. Life is not meant to be easy. You will discover that you are stronger than the obstacles I set before you. And, if you are not yet strong enough, you will become so during your struggles. Your strength will come through the wisdom you acquire. It will be a mental strength, and a spiritual one. 

Also, I will never place on to you a burden too great for you to bare; I will always find ways to help you: I will send others to assist you; I will arrange for necessary advice to get to you: When the student is ready, the teacher will come; I will arrange for your load to be lightened in other areas separate to your immediate struggles; I will guide you - somehow - and give you the time you need.  

Also, don’t try to rush things. You can’t. Things happen - lessons are learned - in the time they are meant to: You cannot push the river, it flows by itself. 

And know the darkness and the difficulties you face along the new path will not last forever. The sun will return, the difficulties will be sorted, and you will be changed afterward. You will have grown in strength and wisdom, and that is why you must struggle in your life path. This is how you grow. And you will surprise yourself: You are stronger than you know. You are stronger than life is hard.’  

Maybe life is about transformation, like the plot of the children's story, Pinocchio: Maybe we start our life journey like the puppet, Pinocchio, and we travel through all manner of challenges and problems, and somewhere - before we come to the end - we realise that we have grown so much that we are no longer puppets; we have become real along the way.

We might then discover what life is really about: Love, compassion, helping, forgiveness, tolerance, patience - for ourselves as much as for others.  We might also discover that life took no wrong turns: All those annoying interruptions and unexpected detours - along the busy main roads towards our chosen nirvana - were actually the real pathways of our lives all along: the true destiny of our lives was growth and wisdom. The hard unwanted side-roads took us there.

So, my own annoying life detours, in recent months, have kept me from my desk and my blog and writing: my own chosen nirvana. Yet, I regret none of the things that have happened, or the decisions I made. These miserable and difficult side-roads involved me stopping to go back and help two people - my travelling companions - people I love dearly. They are travelling along very hard roads now, but it was nice to see that I could help them. As a medical doctor, I have always felt that that is my path. I see helping others as a privilege. Also, I know that we are not islands and all of us need help from time to time. We help each other. Life is so hard; we all need help to get through.

Meanwhile, my desk sits patiently waiting. I am back travelling  along the old familiar road of my life again - although I am once more changed - even from such a short sojourn. The journey continues ...

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