All Kinds of Ways

The Magic of the Meandering Path

Photo by Deva Darshan on Unsplash

It seems it’s the season for changing it up. All around me, people are shifting gears - sometimes amidst difficulty or disaster, family dynamics, or loss. Sometimes in opportunity, looking for chances, and seizing the day when they arrive. Whether changing lanes out of choice or necessity, turn-abouts can make best-laid rhythms and plans a muddled mess.

How should you go? How should I?

As a list maker and planner, I have spreadsheets and check-ins and timelines; partnerships, co-working arrangements and an invaluable accountability group. Yet, week after week, I find myself going off-piste, redirected by circumstance.

I’ve finally decided to stop looking at it as a bad thing.

It’s easy to beat ourselves up when we skirt benchmarks or miss internally imposed deadlines, but I’ve spent a lifetime already learning to accept the non-linearity of progress, the lack of a recipe for success. Faced with the realistic limits of “What to expect,” why not rewrite the narrative of today’s journey to fit today?

I resonate with this observation by acclaimed poet and author, Annie Dillard:

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.” – Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

But there are all kinds of ways to get where we’re going, and the logical one is neither the only nor the right.

The Washington Post’s syndicated advice columnist, Carolyn Hax, recently observed, “it’s hard to unpack what we want vs. what society tells us we want.” Yes. Society has plenty of ideas about how to live. American culture goes all in on checking things off and getting things done. We learn young to want achievement for achievement’s sake, or to value the endpoints more than our journeys.

And while much of the time, that would be fine, helpful even, sometimes it is better to do than to finish.

There are all kinds of ways.

This morning, instead finalizing this late, languishing newsletter, I worked on my novel. I didn’t have a plan other than to reconnect with the heart of a story I’ve been struggling to nail down. I didn’t have a productivity timeline, because I’ve breezed through too many of those already without success. Today, as a “first day after vacation,” a “just back from travel” day, I would normally head straight for the easy checklist wins. But something told me to look for magic instead.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Remarkably, affirmingly, changing my rhythm and expectations away from what seemed rational, led to a jostling of ideas. Freed from focusing on finishing something, I made loads of progress. I’m glad that today I chose a different way.

I remembered my pivot superpower.

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On journeys of love or grief or creativity, we’ll likely need to tap into the magic of all kinds of ways. In life, if society forgets to tell you to pause, take a side road, or wait, check your toolkit. There are options to change it up.

Says the poet Rumi:

"Listen, my love, illumination is eternal. Now is always evolving. As there are billions of stars, there are billions of steps. As there are billions of souls, there are billions of ways to grow."

And all kinds are available to you today - what magic!?