Hypotenuse (or As the Crow Flies)
Hypotenuse – The side of a right triangle opposite the right angle.
There is something in me that craves efficiency. Perhaps it’s a flavor of impatience. It says that if I am here and what I want is there, getting what I want should be as easy as traversing the distance from here to there–traveling the hypotenuse like the proverbial crow.
The problem is…life isn’t straight lines and short cuts. Life is filled with crab walking, roundabouts, and waiting and seeing.
When we think we know where we’re going, our circuitous routes feel like detours. When the destination is less certain, the path can feel like a perpetual aimlessness.
We don’t fly like crows. We experience, investigate, and assimilate. We expand and improve. We love and grieve.
While we might have an idea of our direction, talents, and vocational call, we are also a product of our experiences. Ask any 40-year old if they got where they were aiming at 20, and the short answer is no. The long answer is complicated and colorful. Careers we never expected. Relationships that surprised us. Avocations that begged our attention with such persistence they simply wouldn’t to be ignored. And, in the process, a life was built.
Try as I might, my life has not come together with paint by number certainty. There were jobs I didn’t get and one I was relieved of. My plan of being done having kids by 30 didn’t begin until 33. And alas, all plans to return to Paris after my college summer abroad have been thwarted (so far).
Not knowing how the story will unfold doesn’t make it a bad story. I am continuously reminded to appreciate the richness of the life that is living me as I live it.
Then life’s right angles are simply the corners around which our next surprise is waiting.
One Comment
Bob Burden
Many of my plans have turned out to be ideals that could or may happen, if I had prepared differently. Buying that ticket before it was sold out, saving for that new truck, stating a non touchable financial future, when I was a teenager. retiring early.
On the other side of the sward, I unknowingly prepared myself for things I didn’t plan. Learning talents for the next job I didn’t believe I was qualified for, after being terminated. Hitting an emotional, physical and spiritual bottom in order to start a renewed and full life. Not ever wanting or planning to be a father only to end up with two beautiful boys.
My story is full of good, bad and ugly, but it has also been a journey that I could never have written or dreamed.
I’ve come to believe that something bigger than me is in control of my plans , and that I only need to prepare to be ready for the next corner.