Destinations

We've all heard it said that life is a journey. Interestingly enough, the destination is really not known.

Okay, sure, there is the whole heaven and hell thing. But not everyone believes in those places and besides that, those places are "on the other side" so to speak, so they're really the "after" life, not life. And then there is the whole idea of setting goals, having dreams, achieving your desires. There's planning and making things happen.

Then there is real life.

The journey that is life is simply not something that you can plan. At least that is what I've discovered over the last year. I think you can make plans. You can have goals and dreams and you can work toward achieving them. But just like any other journey, you cannot really see what's up ahead. (Okay, well now with GPS technology, you can see ahead if you're driving from point A to point B, but there isn't a GPS for life ... yet.)

An ad for a new Web site, health.com, stopped me in my tracks the other day as I flipped through a magazine. I don't usually stop for ads. But this one resonated with me. There was a road sign. It said "Breast Cancer". Just under it an arrow indicated "Detour" ... and there was my life in front of me, in a nutshell, described in a short, 4-color message.

I think we all have detours as we journey through life, and I think that while the detours can be very unnerving, scary, and throw us off our pace and schedules, the only way to get back on course and to continue toward those goals and dreams is to follow through on that detour.

While my detour was no picnic, I certainly did find out some things about myself I didn't already know, and I discovered what's really valuable to me as I ventured that road. The detour slowed me down, in some instances stopped me dead in my tracks, but it also helped me to appreciate the road of life, detours, potholes, stop signs and all.