There Are No Detours in Life

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path.” ~ Ryan Holiday.

Frustrating, isn’t it?

You’re running late to a get together with your best friends. As you’re driving to get there, just up the road ahead you see the dreaded detour sign.

The GPS tells you it will add fifteen minutes to your trip. It’s not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but you fume with anger because you hate being late. You hate things not going as you planned. And you hate detours.

You may feel this way now about your life. You may think your life has taken a detour, maybe even a permanent one.

Maybe you expected to have passed the bar and be practicing law by now but instead you’re at home taking care of twin girls. Or you expected to become a star athlete in college when your whole life plan was derailed by the actions of a drunk driver. Or you expected to have mastered your anger but find yourself angrier than ever.

You feel like a total failure. You feel you’re playing catch-up to the life you’ve always imagined for yourself.

You say to yourself, “If I could only get back on track, I would be ok.”

But what if you are already on the track? What if you never left?

The detour is a myth

If you feel you’re in the middle of a detour in your life, the first step is to feel compassion for yourself right where you are.

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And feel the compassion flowing into you. Feel the truth you’ve been depriving yourself of oxygen by shallow breathing. Feel the gratitude your body expresses to you for filling its lungs to capacity.

Now open your eyes and say to yourself:

“May I be present to the unfolding of my life. May I trust that I am right where I need to be because there are no detours in life.”

Maybe you find yourself unable to accept the notion that there are no detours in life as your mind races with objections:

“But what about the choices we make? What about the choices others make that affect us? Don’t they matter?”

Choices matter. But choices don’t create detours. Choice is the tool life uses to carve out your path. This carving tool only works in one direction. It can’t go backward. It can’t create alternative realities.

Let’s revisit the drunk driver example. A person who believes that the actions of the drunk driver derailed them may say, “If that person wasn’t drinking, I would have had a successful athletic career in college. I would have had a professional career. I wouldn’t be in this wheelchair.”

It’s what I would say if I were in that situation.

But ask yourself this question. Do you know any of these statements to be true? Was this predetermined path this person described one that existed in reality? Are there other possibilities for how this person’s life may have turned out if the drunk driver didn’t hit them?

If you allow yourself to explore similar beliefs you may have about what might have been, you’ll see that most of the suffering in your life comes from yearning for a life that never existed. Consider that this idealized life may never have come into being even if you and everyone around you made all the “right” choices.

Expectations create detours

Choices do not create detours, expectations do. They create the illusion that your life is different from the way it was supposed to be.

Once you’re willing to give up the expectations, it will be easier to see that the thing you call a detour is actually your life. It is not a sideshow.

If you can be present in your life, no matter how frustrating and painful your present moment is, you’ll find the strength to live in the now. You may even find joy.

No longer afraid to make decisions

Here’s something else that will likely happen.

You’ll no longer be afraid to make decisions for fear that a wrong move may put you on an alternative life path.

This does not mean you will become fatalistic, hopeless, or unmotivated. It just means you’ll be free from indecision. You will trust in the unfolding of your life while owning your decisions and consequences of those decisions.

You’ll also stop blaming the decisions of others for how your life turned out.

Embrace your life

So understand that there are no detours to embrace, wait out, or avoid.

There is only the continual unfolding that is your life.

Embrace this.

Embrace your life.

Because the path you are on is singularly precious.