AH! Here it is … fourteen of us realized it a little too late.
You’d think a bright yellow sign the size of a door would be hard to miss. But fourteen of us somehow managed it.
This is the same walk I told you about last week … the one along the Birrarung, where the bridge was out.
By this point the bridge was ancient history, and we were on to Plan F. (Or possibly G. Everything kept not-quite working out.)
We’d set our sights on the Heidi, a wonderful art museum on the edge of Melbourne, and we were absolutely certain we were walking towards it …
We were not walking towards it.
For half an hour we walked briskly and companionably in precisely the wrong direction, until we reached the kind of dead end that leaves no room for debate.
Someone at the back said, quietly, “I think I saw a sign pointing the other way.” And with a degree of shamefacedness, we turned around.
How do fourteen reasonably intelligent adults miss a sign that’s so obvious?
It was raining, so our heads were down with hoods up.
But a better reason was that we were deep in conversation, because this was the kind of walk where the conversation was the point.
Alas, the sign was there the whole time. And the way was marked.
So let me ask you to do the thing we forgot to do when we’re on a mission to get from Point A to Point B …
Pause for a minute and give yourself a breath. And then look for the signs around you that you might (consciously or subconsciously) be choosing to ignore.
What might you notice if you stopped to look?
Deciding to notice is an act of responsibility. The journey is never just to keep walking. It’s to stop and navigate and orienteer. To notice where you are, and what’s around you, and to adjust to the moment, rather than lose yourself in the work.
