Lessons in Cliché: It’s the journey. (Really.)

I am forty miles into the drive, my mind still on the packing list that is now irrelevant, when I realize every third telephone pole is a trophy stand for a hawk or falcon, and I begin to count. By the time I hit 35, I’m noticing the unique beauty of each bird, the fanfare that is on complete display. I am transfixed by the red sheen of this one’s wing, the two that lean toward each other like the old men at the breakfast joint I like to frequent, the little falcon that takes flight like a feathered ballerina.  Watching birds is a gift I shower on myself, the pleasure of just noticing and seeing, without knowing much about their names or patterns of flight. That busy work I leave to other things. Birds are my present. 

After I’ve added bald eagles, vultures, and blackbirds to the count, I miss a turn and the spell is broken. I was not necessarily paying attention, I realize with chagrin, so much is losing myself in what was spellbinding. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless, of course, you are accountable to be somewhere specific at an appointed time. (Also, driving.) I go from spellbound to frustrated, calculating, working out the workaround for my certain lateness. I am doing what I always do: develop the strategies. Solve for the altered scenarios. Modern society rewards us for reacting towards solutions, and I have several Band-Aid strategies figured before I realize my figuring and frustration is not the same as pausing to pay attention to what is happening. It is only when I do this – pause – that I see myself keening on the brink of agitation.   

Here’s the benefit of teaching what you need to learn: eventually, you improve. Not so long ago, I would not have even noticed the birds or been capable of self-arrest. This time, I catch the spinning-into-strategy mode, and I stop.  I literally stop the car. I realize the hawks had my attention when I should have been hitting the turn signal, and now without the Internet  to calculate if it is faster to double back or press forward, I revel in the mindful act of deciding which way to go without all the checking, double-checking and handwringing. I decide to keep moving forward. 

I turn all the digital things off, even though none of them were functioning properly, and just let myself do this one thing: drive down the road, giving my attention to the scenery and the route, so that I see where I am and also don’t end up in the wrong state. (I wish I could say I have no experience with mindlessly crossing state borders.) The thing about a road trip is that metaphor and reality merge. I am truly putting my attention on the journey, not the destination.  

I am often asked if I feel pressure to live up to my interest in being aware, paying close attention to my life. Does it make me anxious trying to be some sort of mindfulness guru? Perhaps it should, but it doesn’t. I have missed so many signals in my life thus far, missed entire forests for the trees, and once, even missed the whole city of Salt Lake while driving past its sparkling lights because I was completely distracted by my cousin Cathy’s conversation. And while I wouldn’t trade the experience of being completely overcome by laughter and conversation or, the miles we’ve gotten out of telling the story about the time we missed a whole entire city, it is a gift to appreciate the joy of an experience while also having the capacity to keep your eye on the road. 

Next month, June 13–15, Becoming Jackson Whole will host a science-based and inspired conversation at the Center for the Arts on this very skill. As we amass a broad set of tools for living with mindfulness as the setpoint (the road we have our eye on), what we’re aiming for is community in which we can each live in the moment of the journey, instead of the countdown to the finish line. Find out more about it at www.becomingjacksonwhole.org. 

I pull into the airport to pick up my friend, and as it turns out, I’m pretty much right on time. Deliberating over a back-up plan would have been for nothing, though I had called ahead to admit right up front that I had taken a detour.  

“Is it pretty?” my friend had asked, when my call had gone through. “I’ll be here when you get here. Maybe you can just enjoy the scenery.”