When I was learning to fly a few years back, I was
introduced to a navigational aid called an ADF or Automatic Direction Finder. It’s an instrument mounted in the cockpit of
an airplane, or boat for that matter, with compass headings printed around an index card
and a needle in the middle that picks up a desired radio frequency. To fly or travel toward the broadcast signal,
you turn your craft until the needle lines up and you are on your way. A bit oversimplified, but again, the idea
being that if your course is not the one you want, you have but to make a
simple correction before continuing forward.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if life was just this easy? Unfortunately our personal destinations, be
they romantic, professional or otherwise are mostly hidden from us. We begin our journeys with a preconceived
vision of what our successful completion will look and feel like, but when we
get there it’s often nothing like what we thought it would be, either better or
worse. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous
quote, “Life is a journey, not a destination,” is almost as much a warning to
the brave as it is a truism.
I have, at times, in my own journey felt as though I’ve been
stumbling about in a fog. Busily and aggressively
stumbling, actively seeking, yet stumbling still. Like a blind man in a dark cave, reaching for
walls that are not there, grasping for that reassuring feedback that I'm not
alone and am, at the very least, heading in the right direction. Even horses get to wear ‘blinders’ on the
sides of their eyes to keep them trotting along in the desired direction. How many times I have wanted for that
Automatic Direction Finder to steer a true or better heading. How many times I would have settled for one
of those magic eight ball novelties. Shaking
a simple “yes” or “no” on that floating dice would have helped a great deal,
accurate or not.
Many times, it’s true, that it was not a compass I was
lacking at all, but “compass-ion.”
Acting in selfishness, not malicious selfishness but that nearly invisible
selfishness that comes with its own set of ‘blinders’ so that you are not
distracted by what’s around you, to the degree that by only focusing on myself
I failed to see the opportunity around me.
My “passion” sometimes only included me alone in my decision making processes.
I like the word “compassion.” It’s been described as co-suffering. That definition is too hard to just walk past
and ignore. The older I become, the more convinced I am that it is in fact the
opposite of “selfishness.” To follow a
compass, whose dial is indexed not in references of North, South, East and
West, but in degrees of passion is a far better instrument to trust with our
life path.
There are so many things to be passionate and com-passionate
about. With every turn toward
compassion, every course correction in the direction of concern for one
another, the better we become at receiving those signals that guide and shape
who we eventually become. It’s really
amazing to me that like the fog that sometimes has enshrouded my own hopes and
dreams, how quickly selfishness dissipated into nothingness when I took my ‘blinders’
off to the world around me. Experience
has shown me, sometimes over and over again, that by simply pausing momentarily
to observe the needs, wants, hopes and dreams of others, my own destinations
beacon becomes loud and clear.
Cycling has been (sorry about this one) a rather “circular”
journey for me. As a young teenager I
was an avid cyclist and loved every single sweaty pedal stroke. Then, for reasons I cannot justify but can
drop nicely into the “selfishness” box, I put riding aside. For thirty years, literally, I dreamed of
cycling but never said a word. I could find
no signal to follow, no nifty little arrow to guide me back to something I
loved so much, and no one to trust enough to reach out too. It was in loving another that it came back to
me. It’s a lesson I have not forgotten. By keeping my blinders off, others have been
inspired to follow. Needs have been met,
hope has been given and kindness extended… in many directions. Answers have been found, goals achieved and
new motives set in place. All I had to
do, and it seems so simple, was to stop clawing and scratching my way in the
darkness, stop peering through the fog of my own self centered ambition… and
have a little look around.
Compassion….Wiki defines it as “…the understanding or empathy for the suffering of
others. It is regarded as a fundamental part of human love, and a cornerstone
of greater social interconnection and humanism —foundational to the highest principles
in philosophy, society, and personhood.”
I can think of no other beacon I would rather have guide me through
life, the pursuit of happiness….and the open road.
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