Four things a child must know to keep moving forward.

The other afternoon, I decided to pay my mother a surprise visit. I hadn’t been home in a while and I sort of knew that it was time to go north. So doing what good yet guilt ridden children do, I decided to go home to visit my mom.

I must tell you that my mom is a bit old fashion. She’s not big on surprises. She wouldn’t admit it openly but she is without question a creature of habit. She likes for you to call in advance and literally plan the details of the visit. Seriously, she asks for more information than a five star hotel. Not only does she want answers to questions like “when will you arrive” and “how many will be in your traveling party” but she also requests your preference for each meal.

Over the years, I’ve found my mom’s level of travel specificity overwhelming. I just want to visit her whenever I want to visit. If she’s home spectacular, I’ll get to spend some time with the woman who gave me life. If she’s not home it’s okay too, I’ll get to spend some time with some of the people who helped me become who I am.

When I’m not held to a strict travel itinerary, it’s a win-win. I get to visit my mom or I get to visit those people whom I ordinarily don’t get to spend time with whenever I return home.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION (T.M.I.)

In case, I haven’t made my preference perfectly clear let me restate it this way – I prefer to keep things fluid. I just like to go with the flow. I don’t believe I should have to use TripIt.com to go home.

If I wake up and want to go visit, I want to be able to go. If I wake up and want to go back to my bed, I want to be able to do that also. I can’t for the life of me figure out why so much detail is required to go 152.2 miles. Nevertheless, on this day, against my better judgment, I called my mom and hinted that I might come home.

Feeling the flow, I set course for home to see my mom. The trip began gloriously. Sunshine abound and temperatures in the mid-80s. It was a perfect day to do whatever I wanted to do which included surprising my mom.

NOT FOR LONG

The picture-perfect travel day didn’t last for long. Unexpectedly, the bridge was out which was going to extend the drive time by 30 additional minutes. No big deal I thought. What’s thirty minutes in the grand scheme? Keep moving forward!

Unfortunately, the bridge being out wasn’t the only unexpected surprise. Out of nowhere, the sky started to get dark. The more accurate depiction is to say that the sky turned black and rain began to bludgeon the car.

And the darker the sky turned, the harder and larger the pellets of rain fell from the sky. At one point, it was so dark out that the only thing you could see were the golf ball sized chunks of hail that illuminated as they bounced off the windshield. Keep moving forward!

At an instance the road was covered with ice. As you undoubtedly know, ice and cars are like oil and water. What was a paved free flowing highway was suddenly an outdoor ice rink with a great mass of cars piled up in the right hand lane and the shoulder.

I-65 was a collection of stopped cars that resembled the crowded American repair shops where automobile owners all across the country anxiously await Takata airbag replacements. In short, it was a mess. The incident looked like a scene from the movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”. Keep moving forward!

KEEP MOVING FORWARD

Even though, pulling over and joining the massive pile of cars which had accumulated on shoulder seemed like the right thing to do, I knew it wasn’t. By all accounts, sitting with the other stagnate drivers and waiting for the storm to pass seemed like the prudent thing to do but  I knew it wasn’t.

Pulling over and stopping is so often the easy, the comfortable thing to do but rarely is it the right thing to do. More often than not, the right thing to do is what I did – keep moving forward.

After having driven cautiously and purposely out of the storm, I realized that my mother wasn’t the only person who was going to be receiving something unexpected. The journey to see my mom had served as an unintended but important reminder about how to navigate life. There were four things that stood out during my trip that I believe are worth sharing:

1. Detour – Diversions should be anticipated. Anticipating detours will make any delays in the journey more palatable. What’s key is that you never lose sight on where you are going, who is counting on you to arrive, what it will mean to others when you arrive and how continuing to move forward this time will affect your ability and willingness to move forward the next time you are confronted with a sudden change of plans.

Don’t fret over detours. Alternative routes, long way around and indirect methods are all acceptable modes of advancing a goal or dream. It’s turning back or quitting which are not acceptable. Detour simply means you are going to get to your destination but you will arrive using a route different than the one you started on.

One last thing about detours, never let a detour become a dead-end.

2. Unforeseen – Life is little more than a whole lot of things happening “out of the blue”. Imagine a life where you knew the outcome of every thought and action before it occurred. Do you think you would enjoy knowing every outcome? What would be the purpose of living?

Rather than view the unforeseen as a hardship, use the unforeseen for what it truly represents – an opportunity to prepare properly. The unforeseen is what makes you sign-up for AAA, carry a mobile phone, pack an emergency kit and keep a properly inflated spare tire. When you prepare properly, you might be startled by the unforeseen but you will be well equipped to keep moving forward.

3. Storms – As much as we hate storms, we need them. Absent storms, we would have no way to appreciate the sunny days. We actually rely on storms to make us stronger.

The experience of a storm and surviving the storm makes dealing with subsequent storms more manageable. Even when the next storm is more severe, knowing what to expect of a storm provides a type of “calm in face of a storm” which didn’t exist prior to the first storm. When things turn dark and situations appear bleak, you know from first-hand experience that storms don’t last forever. Storms come and storms go.

There is one other great thing about storms that is worth mentioning. Without life’s storms, we would have no way to distinguish between those who love us and those who simply like us when it is convenient for them. Storms are the great devotion strainer. Storms filter out the friends from the acquaintances, the real from the fake, and the dependable from the inconsistent.

In the melodious sounds of New Edition, “storms will come for sure”. Can you (and those who profess to love you) stand the rain?

4. Masses – Most of the time doing what is popular means doing what is easy. Typically, the masses don’t embrace struggle or challenges which is why so few of us set or accomplish any goals. Moreover, the decision to follow the masses explains why even fewer of us dream of doing anything beyond the ordinary.

The masses get off the road and stop moving forward anytime things get a little challenging. For the exceptional few, becoming inactive or stopping for any reason is unacceptable.  The exceptional few keep moving forward if only inch by inch.

While the masses sit in the spot where they are being pelted by the storms, the exceptional few keep moving forward towards the intended destination. The exceptional few know that by going forward they are either going away from the storm or they are going through the storm. Either way, the exceptional few know that they will reach the desired destination long before the masses.

Can you guess what happened when I arrived at my mom’s home? If you answered she wasn’t home, you would be correct but that’s another story for another time. I’ve probably said too much already.

Are you raising children who embrace challenges or are you raising children who believe a detour is a dead-end? How do you handle your own storms: do you sit still and get pelted or do you keep moving forward?