The Shortest Distance Between Two Points

Nowadays, we often travel to our destinations by the shortest possible route, taking wide clean featureless highways as dictated by our electronic guidance device. We take the easy road that someone else has chosen for us instead of the interesting road we might discover for ourselves. We no longer have our own adventures.

What we lose when we take the path that someone else has mapped out is those odd little nooks and crannies, the quirky little side roads we only discover by accident. And speaking of maps, how often do we even look at a big picture view, which gives us an overall sense of where we are going and offers us choices instead of giving us moment-by-moment commands?

More and more, our social media channels and smart technology also guide us and prompt us along the path most travelled, the topics most likely to interest us based on what we have always done before. The options offered to someone else with different tastes and experiences are not even on our radar.

The world is an increasingly complex and overwhelming place. We are more aware than ever of the scale of information that we just don't know, and it seems to neutralize our ability to make decisions based solely on our own knowledge and experience. We don't trust ourselves, and despite our seemingly skeptical and cynical societal values, we seem to be eager and willing to put our trust in something we perceive to be smarter than us. It has even been suggested that the recent popularity of some extreme religious or political groups is that they tell their followers exactly what to think, what to do, how to behave; there is no need to make decisions, just to follow the rules without question.

This unquestioning willingness to let someone else tell us what's good, what's cool, what will be best for us, also spills over into the tangential aspects of our journeys, when we fall into the pattern of choosing the safe and familiar, the big box stores and brand name restaurants, instead of the unique little corner pub or family boutique. We know what we will get and there are no surprises. 

How sad.

There is a well-known poem by Linda Ellis about the shortest distance between two symbols on a tombstone, represented by the dash between the dates of birth and death. I plan to make my dash a long and swirly one, filled with side trips and adventures, unique stories and authentic experiences that define me as a one-of-a-kind piece in the big puzzle.