Getting to where we want to go is not always a straight shot. Accomplishing the goals we have for our lives is not easily gained in three easy steps. Yet in whatever we are aiming to achieve, we want to keep moving forward. So what happens when the way forward requires us to go the long way around?
I remember when my younger sister was getting ready to get her drivers license, to my shocked surprise, she asked me to show her how to drive. I smile now, but that afternoon is forever burned in my imagination, fear has a way of leaving a long-lasting impression. The memory is fresh, and funny now, but in the moment I white-knuckled it all the way. We both buckled up and drove through our neighbourhood. We bumped up over sidewalks, barely weaved past parked cars, and I’m sure I developed some yet-undiagnosed anxiety disorder. When we finally pulled back into our driveway, I hugged my sister and firmly decided I would not have a career as a driving instructor. Sometime later my sister was able to get her license and was soon driving like a pro race car driver.
Her journey to getting her license was not a straight line. She didn’t just get in a car and head down the highway. Before she could get her license, she had to spend time weaving and bumping around the neighbourhood.
Saying, “you have to walk before you can run” is one way to find our way forward. However sometimes the way forward is more complex than that. Sometimes you have to go backwards before you can go forward. Investors know you have to spend money to make money. This “one step backward, and two steps forward” approach is often true.
Everyone in Chestermere wants what is best for themselves, we want to move forward. This is why we get worked up when we feel like something is not going our way. We want happiness, health, and hope in our own lives and for our families. When something seems to stand in our path forward, we get angry. Yet the way we pursue life for ourselves cannot be found by simply pushing forward. Selfishness may be a vice, not because caring for ourselves is bad, but because selfishness is not the way we care for our own wellbeing. The ironic reality is that if we want to look out for ourselves, selfishness is not the way to get there. The way forward is upside down: if we want what’s best for ourselves, we have to find what’s best for another.
Scottish poet George Macdonald wrote that “The love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self.” When we choose to love those around us and put the needs of others ahead of our own, we may feel like we’re going backwards. And we may be. The cost of loving others could be high. Still, as we invest our lives in others, we will begin to see the place we live, and the challenges we face, differently. A life spent loving our neighbours may seem like the long way around. Yet those who travel the long way around often find that they have, all along, been moving forward.
