When I about 16, I was involved in the Boy Scouts. On one trip, we were going to do a hike that consisted of going to a couple of different lakes and then ending up back at our cars at camp. From this point, this story could go a lot of different ways! We had a leader severely sprain his ankle mid-way through the hike, we camped right next to a group of foreign college students who... didn't share our same standards of modesty, we even ran out of water and filtered our own.
As many different stories exist from this trip that could be shared, I want to share my experience going from Weaver Lake to Jenny Lake.
When we were deciding to make the hike from Weaver Lake to Jenny Lake, we looked at our map and decided that we could probably find a better way. We had our compasses. We had a detailed map. We thought we were completely prepared and safe to make our own way.
We started off on the marked trail and then decided to go off the path and try a different way. After about two hours, we started to get nervous. We believed that we were traveling in the right direction, but nothing looked right. Even though we started out, confident that we could find our way to our destination, we never suspected that leaving the path would create so many unexpected challenges. The map we had became very confusing. The direction we headed had many obstacles that were not detailed on the map. Rocks, heavy forest, steep inclines.
We did end up making it to Jenny Lake, but it was much later than we planned and everyone was exhausted.
You are probably way ahead of me by now.
Life is very similar. At least it is in my case. Most of the issuses and struggles that I have our present as a result of me trying to do things my way and not the right way. I know the right way. I have multiple examples in my life of people that have made good decisions and stayed on the marked path. It has been said that, "Experience is the best teacher, but fools will learn by no other way."
Besides all of that, perhaps the most important lesson of this whole thing is "direction."
The comforting thing is that all of us take our own way some times. We are imperfect beings. That is just the way things go. This being said, I believe that life is less about where we are on the map and more about which direction we are heading. Like I said in the story, we eventually made our destination, but we had to go through some things that we all wished we could have avoided by staying on the path.
But that is life.
We learn and we move on, taking a lesson from our choices. It doesn't matter where we are in comparison to anyone else. It matters where we are in comparison to ourselves! In other words... in life, direction is more important than location.
Just a thought.
Let me know what you think.
