When I leave the house I am well-equipped and informed to get to my destination. I’ve allowed myself an extra 20 minutes. Google maps is primed on my iPhone. Traffic is cooperating.

It’s a straight forward journey. No unexpected mishaps along the route, I arrive on the other side of the city in what I think is plenty of time.

And then…

my phone falls to the floor of my car.

my mind tells me I’ve gone too far.

I take a left turn thinking it’s the wrong turn and then decide, No. It’s right.

I phone a co-worker who is meeting me at my destination where a group of fifteen Public Health nurses are waiting for me to give them a presentation on Calgary Counselling Centre. She tells me to find 8th Ave.

I find 8th Ave, but it’s going west. I need to go east. I turn east.

And spend the next 20 minutes driving around in circles, looking for the address where I need to be.

In the meantime, my co-worker is asking people at the centre where I’m to be how to get from where I’m at to where they are. I tell them the names of the intersection I’m at. They tell me to go straight. Follow that road. Find 8th Ave.

It’s the 8th Ave. that gets me. It doesn’t exist.

Except.

It does.

Just not in the quadrant I’m in.

The address I’m to be at is on 8th Ave S.E.

I’m driving around in circles a few blocks to the north, in the N.E.

I will never find my destination until I let go of my conviction, I’m going the right way. I’m on the right path. I’m not lost, google maps is wrong.

Eventually, I realize my mistake. I stop to ask someone for directions and as I am about to get out of the car, I realize my ‘quadrant’ error. I didn’t need directions after that. It was a simple task of taking the main road I was on, south, crossing the intersecting avenue, turning left and there I was. Exactly where I was meant to be.

I was grateful for getting lost, I told the nurses when I began my presentation. We all get lost sometimes, I told them. We all become convinced the path we are on is the right one, even when the evidence is alarmingly clear we’re not. We ignore the signposts. We confuse the directions we’re given because we can’t see there’s another path, another way to get where we’re going.

Sometimes, we need help to clear our thinking. Sometimes, we need other people to guide us out of the darkness.

I got lost yesterday and received a valuable lesson.

No matter how well-equipped I am, ‘stuff happens’. And when it does, my conviction that I am where I’m meant to be is not always the right one. No matter how well-informed I am, if the evidence points in the wrong direction, check the signposts. Be open to possibility. Be prepared to change directions. Be willing to examine my assumptions.

And, provide those guiding you all the information. Because I never mentioned the quadrant (Calgary is built on four quadrants, N.E., S.E., N.W., S.W.) my helpful direction-givers didn’t think to make that simple statement — you are in the wrong quadrant. In telling me to keep looking for 8th Ave. they didn’t realize I was looking for 8th Ave. in a quadrant where it doesn’t exist. Their directions, while helpful, didn’t include a vital piece of information because I didn’t clarify how lost in my thinking about where I was I really was.

I got lost yesterday and found myself open to the possibility of how different life can be when I let go of my convictions that the path I’m on will take me to where I want to be.

It isn’t always true.

Sometimes, the path I’m on has all the markings of being where I want to be, except, it’s based on my assumptions it’s in the right zone. Asking for directions is important but,  if I don’t tell the whole story about where I’m at, no matter what you tell me to do to get to where I’m going, I’ll still be driving around the circles of my assumptions.

And in the end, even google maps can’t make a difference when I am driving in my conviction I am right, it’s wrong!