None of us expected what was around that corner.
Two hours into the walk, a workman stepped into our path and said, “Sorry, the bridge is out.”
I was back in Australia in early August, leading a walk along the river that runs through Melbourne — the Birrarung, which the indigenous people named the river of mist. (A far better name than the one the British gave it.)
My friend Dr Jason Fox and I had been playing with the idea of a mini quest for a while … we wanted something that was not quite a hike (too physical), but not quite a self-help intervention (too heady). Something in the middle.
We landed on a walk with some deliberateness and intention stitched into it.
As you can imagine … it did not go according to plan.
The weather was about as lousy as Melbourne gets: cold, grey, dreary, rain the whole way.
I’d damaged my knee, so I wasn’t sure I’d manage 20 kilometres on it, but a few anti-inflammatories kept me going. (We don’t learn from the pain. We walk through it.)
And then we came upon the bridge …
The bridge was what we needed to cross the river, but it was being repaired.
So we took a long detour around, into places we hadn’t planned for.
At one point, we were all clambering over an electric fence with various tender parts of ourselves too close to it.
Long story short, we never made it to the end. The weather and the broken bridge won this one.
We set a halfway destination, reached it, and let Ubers carry us to the celebratory feast.
I’m sure you’ve had a similar quest where the plan falls apart.
We picture the journey as a stroll through an evergreen glade with the sun out, birds tweeting, breeze delicate the whole way through.
So when the path breaks, we only see what went wrong.
But Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by noting that happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
The happy family isn’t much of a story. Neither is the happy journey.
The tale with the hiccups and the barriers and the bridge that’s out is the one worth telling.
So the next time the metaphoric bridge is out, rather than slumping, try responding with: how fascinating.
It’s a small shift in stance, from despair to curiosity. Inviting curiosity will help you figure out what your options are.
Because the moment you have options, you’re back in choice. And choice is where your agency lives.
