How do you tell if an obstacle you encounter is a warning to go no further or a test to see if you really want what’s on the other side? This question has been in the back of my head for the past few months. I recently got back from a big road trip and, before I set out, I experienced a lot of things that could have prevented me from leaving. Instead, I chose to see them as challenges to overcome. Thorough preparation and some wise decisions I made along the way gave me a wonderful experience and I’m glad I went on this trip. Still, that doesn’t answer my question initial. Let’s explore that a bit and see what comes up.
It was easier for me to think of the obstacles as tests to see how badly I wanted it since I was so determined to go. This year has been the hardest for me since 2017 and I desperately wanted a good change of pace; my hope, which turned out to be correct, was that I’d get a lot of positive things out of this trip. That made it easy for me to think through potential challenges before they came up, get my car ready for the road, take time off from work, get my finances together, and make the other preparations that would create a memorable trip and put my mind at ease.
That’s not to say I had no fear, though. As is typical for me with road trips, I started getting anxious as the first day drew nearer. Thoughts kept coming up about potential car trouble (I’d experienced some of that on another big road trip in 2017), long days of driving by myself through places I’d never been before, the possibility of my stuff getting lost or stolen, running out of money, etc. Getting all my ducks in a row before setting off helped. Even with the uncertainties that remained, I tried to avoid worrying. One of my friends says that a worry is a prayer for something I don’t want and that’s an excellent way to look at it. I was certain that in time I’d be grateful to have gone on the trip and keeping that in mind helped me push through the fear. The fear mostly went away and stayed away within the first hour, which is also pretty normal for me when it comes to road trips.
Although there were some hiccups, this was an incredibly smooth trip overall. It was overwhelmingly pleasant and had hardly any unpleasantness. No trip has been perfect for me but nothing in life is totally perfect. Life would be much easier to navigate if every good thing had nothing bad in it and every bad thing had nothing good in it. Similarly, if the good stuff was purely pleasurable with no pain and the bad stuff purely painful with no pleasure, then everyone would always know what to do. But where would be the opportunities for growth if that’s how life worked? We need opposites to have growth. Without sadness, we wouldn’t know happiness. Without darkness, we wouldn’t know light. The yin and yang symbol doesn’t just consist of the good and the bad. It has the good, the bad, the little bit of good in the bad, and the little bit of bad in the good. As such, it’s an accurate reflection of life as most things are neither wholly good or wholly bad.
Having done a lot of inner work over the past few weeks, I now firmly believe that we repeat lessons until we learn them. More specifically, I think we repeat lessons as long as we’re following our lower self and move past them once we learn to follow our higher self. It may take a while before we figure out what to do in a given situation. My mindfulness buddy likens this to playing the same level of a video game repeatedly until we eventually master it and can move onto the next level. Now it feels like I’m finally moving past some levels that I’ve been stuck on for years. That’s a wonderful feeling to have, and I credit it to some things I learned or was reminded of on my trip. Yet another reason I’m grateful to have undertaken this adventure.
As with a few of my other posts, I don’t have an answer to the question at the top of this one. I’ve shared some of my thoughts on this subject to let you know what I’m thinking and to see if writing everything out would give me some insight that I would otherwise have missed. If you have any potential answers or thoughts on any of this, I’d love to hear them. Take care and be well as you confront whatever warnings or tests you come across.