Happily Derailed

                At work today, I was completely thrown off my usual routine, as I had to take care of old issues dating back to my former position. It seems that my past experience in this area is needed for the current issues in that department. A job never really finishes. It only lays dormant until new issues arise. In the beginning, it was so hard for me to be thrown back to those old problems. But I had to adjust my attitude a bit, to let go of what I thought I needed to do today.

                Every one of us has this inner voice that tells us where we probably should go and do. Probably. But at best, the voice is really only an estimate of tomorrow’s cares. I think the biggest trap I get into is having a preconceived expectation of what I could and should achieve from day to day, even before I  arrive in the office. It’s good to set targets to motivate myself, but measuring myself by those targets may not be such a good idea. So I have tried to practice the notion of being happily derailed from what I thought I was expected to do.

                I think a good example of what this might mean comes from the natural world. When I see a tree, I rarely ever see it growing perfectly straight in one direction. I remember seeing these beautiful bonsai in a florist’s store, and noticing the way the branches curve and twist in complex ways that preserve the proportionality of the whole. Can those branches be predicted with mathematical accuracy? If so, there would be no beauty in its organization. And there is far too much predictability in terms of how it preserves its proportions. I think in a similar way, it is good to note the ways that life deviates from the plans I have made of it, to contain it or tame it.

                Yet another example comes from the mathematical world itself. I remember going to calculus class and learning about the nature of slopes, particularly as they apply to asymptotic equations. I remember how asymptotes continue to slope upward and upward until infinity, without ever fully reaching the destination of the solid line that marks ‘zero’. The interesting thing is that everything about an asymptote is perfectly predictable, and it obeys all the laws of slope and proportion down to the smallest fraction. But it still fails to obey the human need for an absolute ending. It isn’t good or bad. It obeys the laws of nature, but somehow it disobeys the laws of human comprehension.

                The metaphor I am describing also extends to this idea that somehow I should know who I am and exactly who I should become. While this might be somewhat true, it overlooks the invisible factors that go into this present moment as it is now. At least I can plant the seed in my mind of what I would like to do and make plans accordingly. But I also need to acknowledge the fact that it is one seed in an ocean of seeds. What comes to fruition and what does not is based on innumerable causes, some in my control and others not. This doesn’t mean that I abandon every project before it starts. Rather, it is about humbly accepting the fact that I can have a good overview of where I want to go, but it isn’t a guarantee that I will ever get there. To embrace the whole of that dream, I need to respect the tiny steps and the detours and missteps as well. And I need to see that having a dream is tricky. It is something that needs to be gently entertained, without trying to push too hard to get rid of the other realities that face us, including our physical and time limitations.

                Another way of looking at this is that we get railed and derailed, and this is continually happening again and again. To try to aim at perfect rectitude is to defy this kind of natural process that is happening at every moment: in breath and out breath, long and short, up and down, day and night. So being ‘off the path’ isn’t the end of the path itself; it is a phase in a path. And we can relax into the detours, if we make a vow to learn from them.