Ok, the sat-nav is down and the map is in the boot. You come to a junction: Do you take the left or the right turn? You know you want to be in that general direction so you turn left. But after a while the road starts winding and turning and you are starting to become aware that it isn’t going the way you thought it was and that you should have turned right. You could turn around but maybe by now it’s quicker to carry on and find a turn off to get back on the right track so you don’t. Eventually you end up in someone’s farmyard and have to turn round.
Life is like that. I was reading a blog where the author suggests that “most peoples lives suck because of their poor choices”. He got a grumpy comment back from a reader who was annoyed at him criticising others. Thing is he wasn’t; the choices he was referring to are the small unconscious ones that move us little by little down the wrong path.
No one wakes up on January 1st and says: “This year I want to get fat, get into a soul- sucking relationship, and land a job I hate.”
Instead, you do something that seems like a good idea at the time but then it goes more and more adrift. So instead of getting out you keep going hoping things will improve. Eventually, one day you wake up and realise that you are definitely lost and you have to do something major. Even then a lot of people will just stay there because the pain of moving seems too great. They just stay put and try to rationalise their new situation.
Far better to keep an eye on where you are travelling and leave the ego behind, so that you can admit you are on the wrong track nice and early enough to correct without too much hassle and fallout. Most of the time we are not travelling in a straight line to get anywhere and we are always having to make choices and compromises. But so long as we have a map and keep our eyes on the road signs we should get there without too many problems. (Unless you are driving through Essex but that’s another story)