The other way
The Lafayette reservoir is one of my happiest places. I’ve been going there for years. As a kid, my parents took me to fish or feed the ducks or ride my bike on the trail around the reservoir. As an adult, I run the trail or sometimes go for a picnic or to sit and enjoy the scenery. Needless to say, I know every inch of that reservoir by heart.
When I used to go around the reservoir, I always went clockwise on the trail. And for no reason I can remember, one day I was walking with my mom and decided to try going the other way. And that’s the way I’ve been going for at least several decades.
After a recent run, I decided to walk a little extra as I just didn’t quite feel done yet and I started to go clockwise for the first part of the trail. Despite having walked this loop nearly a thousand times, the stretch I walked (usually at the end of coming around the other way) looked entirely different to me. It curved dramatically and looked much bumpier than I notice when I come the other way.
Going a different way made it seem like an entirely different trail all together. Like one I was only seeing for the first time.
How often do we miss a new perspective – even about something already deeply familiar to us – because we only approach it from one way?
I think about all the obstacles I get snagged on, the ones I metaphorically beat my head against the wall about, the times I’ve worked them sitting in the same chair or pacing the same path…what might have unfolded if I had stood on my head or done cartwheels or walked backwards while working it out? Anything to shake up deepening the same groove of my approach and trying another way.
There is always another way if we can lift our heads just long enough to see it. What other way is open to you right now if you were to simply look up?
