The Way Out
“the beginning of change is always the definition of reality”
Once when i was younger my family camped a few hours north of Toronto. We stayed a few days and it was common for my brothers and I to spend several hours each day peddling around the grounds on our bikes.
On one of the days we found a new path near the end of one of the roads. Naturally we decided to explore. After but a few minutes of riding we discovered that this was not really a path, but collection of trails at the outskirts of the campground. Having explored these trails for a while we decided to head home.
Surely you see where this is going.
We were lost, we tried with little success to retrace our route. However we only succeeded in turning ourselves around a few more times.
My little brother began to worry out loud, what if we never found our way back? What if we had to spend the night? did anyone no how to light a fire? What would we eat?
Myself and my older brother assured him the best we could that we would be alright. After all it was barely into the afternoon, plenty of time to find our way back.
Being the master woodsman we were, we decided our best course of action was to pick a trail and see it through. We chose the direction that we felt had the best chances of taking us home and set off.
After what seemed like hours, our best efforts paid off and we found a road. Again, having little to no clue where we were, we simply picked a direction and set off.
Confidence is everything?
Again our decisiveness seemed to pay off. We found what looked like a school to us and peddled up to the door to ask for directions.
The woman who answered, seemed quite perplexed by the three of us, gave us here best directions back towards the campground (which was the opposite direction along the road we had been travelling) and told us to scram. We later found out this building was not a school, but a low security prison for individuals with mental challenges.
We set out back along the road this time in the opposite and hopefully correct direction, soon encountering our worried parents who had been driving around the area for about an hour.
This story rings true in so many of life’s decisions. Often, having no idea where we are, we pick a direction and set sail.
In hindsight to this childhood misadventure, we realized that while we had spent an hour or two lost in the woods, our campground had remained a mere stones throw from us the entire time. It was not until we figured out we were lost, picked a direction and set out that we began to really travel away from our desired destination of home.
Our problem was that we had no clue.
For all we knew we were miles from our campsite.
This is how it is in life.
If we cannot understand our current situation it becomes near impossible to move in the right direction.
In psychology this idea exists as the term, “name it to tame it”.
This means in order to understand our way out of a situation, we first have to understand our current place in it.
Much like being lost in the wilderness, one cannot calculate an appropriate path out unless he first understands his place on the map.
We need to be prepared. Before we set out we need to do the hard work, digging deep to understand our fears, our worries, our dreams, our joys, our pain, our hurt, our insecurity and our loves.
The more we understand our selves and are aware of this lurking issues, the easier it will be to see them when they show up. The opposite is true, if we have not identified and named the pains and insecurities that exist, when they cause us to act out we will remain unaware.
The beginning of change is always the definition of reality. Once we have defined our current reality, we can see our dreams and our flaws more clearly and begin to move away from our insecurities, and towards our dreams.
When you are struggling to find a way forward, ask yourself: Am I seeing myself clearly? Or am I unaware of something that is shaping me.