Don’t Take Your Eyes Off The Road

I’m old and uninhibited enough to have loved and lost a couple of people in my life. This is normal I understand.

Like many, I have built and broken sandcastles. I have envisioned different roads I would one day drive. Then, while wide awake and knowing, I have allowed those versions of ‘one day’ to get washed away. Sometimes gently. Quietly. And sometimes, by summoned storm.

It is kind of like writing your name at the low tide mark. Never meant for forever. But you like the way it looks for now.

In all these years, I have never found a scientific formula for why some things stick. Why others simply can’t.

I have never found the reason people start writing in ink. Why suddenly we are able to stay. Age? I have always assumed. But that’s not entirely it, is it?

Love, I have been told. But that’s not a strict enough criteria.

Timing, I used to believe. But that doesn’t do it justice.

So, I have never really known, why we are suddenly able to sign on the dotted line, sketch on the dry beach. But now that I have, and the beautiful old illustrated roads are fading from memory, I think, maybe, possibly, perhaps, I have figured out one piece of the puzzle.

Purpose. It’s a bitch of a magnet. It is often hidden, unnamed and most likely untamed.

And it can be the ultimate adversary to the gorgeous but nervous. It is the true fist in the face of ‘let’s do life the easy way’.  Purpose will knock down any pretty sandcastle, if it can’t see itself in the architecture.

Purpose sits below your skin and keeps the blood from pooling in your heart. It pushes to your feet. Tells you to walk girl, walk. It pushes to your eyes. Tells you to look girl, look. Further. On and on.

Purpose doesn’t belong to me. Or to you. It’s the other way around silly billies. It is in all of us. Incomparable and non-competitive. When we find it, in fragments to be put together, when we feed it, when we trust it, it us who belong to it.

When you give purpose your faith, when you say, ‘okay, I’ll come with you, I will put in the work’ … watch the road appear before you. It will be the most exquisite of them all, I promise.

Then just keep walking, keep watching. As more people, with brave feet and bright eyes, emerge from the jungle to walk beside you. And you beside them.

Guaranteed, they will be wonderful beyond belief.

They are called partners. In life or in love.

And if you want, find the one who isn’t afraid of the end of the road. No matter how far away it may seem. The one who dares you to cross mountains. And offers to (sometimes) carry your bag. Hold their hand and don’t let go.

My friend Fonu once said to me late at night at Cardos, “Man. Don’t know why everyone is so scared. Love is abundant.”

The poet Rumi also said, “Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”

Will Smith said this, “Don’t be hanging with no jankass jokers that don’t help you shine. The prerequisite for spending time with any person, is that they nourish and inspire you.”

Madison Ryann Ward sung, “Don’t take your eyes off the road.”
And I wrote this, listening to that song on repeat.

XxX

Ps. What is Jankass?