Take the Long Way

Somewhere near your house is a road you’ve never been down.

You’ve passed it a hundred times. You know the turn exists. Every time, you’ve had somewhere to be.

I wonder what’s down there.

Probably houses. A mailbox leaning at an angle. Somebody’s dog conducting an investigation through a fence.

Could be a pond.

Could be absolutely nothing worth mentioning.

You should go look.

We’ve gotten very good at arriving. The phone knows the route. It knows about traffic. It can tell you, with unsettling confidence, that you’ll be there at 4:17.

And if you take a different turn, it immediately starts working to correct you.

Rerouting.

Relax. I meant to do that.

There ought to be a setting for wandering.

No arrival time. No fastest route. Just a pleasant voice occasionally saying, “That looks interesting.”

A road that ends at the water. A bookstore with inconvenient hours. A small park you somehow never noticed, despite living ten minutes away for years.

The sort of place you find when finding a place wasn’t the assignment.

A lot of life gets squeezed out by knowing exactly what you’re doing.

You go to the store for six things. You buy the six things. You go home. Excellent work. An errand has occurred.

But maybe somebody’s selling peaches beside the road.

Maybe there’s a handwritten sign for a yard sale, and behind a folding table sits a person who would be delighted to tell you the entire history of a lamp.

You don’t need a lamp.

You might enjoy the history.

I like the idea that an ordinary day can still surprise us without anything enormous happening.

No plane ticket required. No announcement that you’re entering a new chapter. You could just eat lunch somewhere you’ve never eaten lunch.

Sit outside.

Order the thing you can’t pronounce.

There are people who can turn this into a system. A challenge. Thirty days of novelty, tracked in a spreadsheet, with a measurable improvement in whatever we’re measuring now.

I’d rather leave a little of it uncounted.

Let a pleasant hour remain a pleasant hour. You don’t have to extract a lesson from the sandwich.

The sandwich has done enough.

Children seem to understand this. Give a child a stick and a little room, and the afternoon can become quite complicated. There are negotiations. Construction. Somebody has been appointed king of a pile of dirt.

Adults walk past and say, “Come on. We’re not doing anything.”

Speak for yourself. There’s a kingdom happening.

Somewhere along the way, we start requiring a reason to enjoy things.

What’s it for? Where will it lead? Could this become something?

Maybe it’s a hobby. Maybe it’s exercise. Maybe you could sell it.

Or maybe the light was coming through the leaves and you wanted to stand there.

That seems sufficient.

There are birds outside conducting their affairs right now. Very serious affairs, judging by the noise. There’s weather moving toward somewhere you’ve never been. Somebody is opening a shop for the first time. Somebody is making a truly unreasonable dog wear a sweater.

The world is busy being a world.

You’re allowed to be interested.

And yes, there are responsibilities. Dinner needs making. People are waiting. The appointment really does start at three.

You can keep your appointments and still leave yourself an occasional hour with no instructions.

Walk until you notice something.

Go into the little museum.

Ask the person about the lamp.

It might be boring. You might get caught in the rain. The restaurant might turn out to have a very generous opinion of its own cooking.

Then you’ll know.

You’ll have a story about the strange lunch and the wrong turn and the afternoon you got soaked trying to see where a path went.

There are worse things to bring home.

So sometime this week, when you have a little room, take the turn you usually pass.

See what’s there.

And if you find the pond, stay awhile.

Have Courage and Be Kind.