You go where you are looking

 So I have my ‘Learners permit’, have driven out of the parking lot, learned the importance of ‘keeping my eyes on the road’; what else did I need to learn? I was set. As I steadied myself and the mass of metal on the road his wise words continued ‘look where you are going, because you go where you are looking’. I did not understand this at first, of course I am looking where I am going,  but then he gave me a simple example without me even knowing it; man he is smart.

My dad is ‘old school’ as people would say (I think I am ‘old school’ now but that is a discussion for another time), he had a difficult time with young people getting into a vehicle and the first thing they did was set the radio to the correct music station crank up the tunes and then get distracted…there were going to be no distractions for me. So when we were on a stretch of road where the possibility of loss of life, limb and accident was nil he asked me to turn the radio on. My first action was to look down to the radio; hoping it was on a music station and not talk radio. I finally found the on/off button, turned it on, and proceeded to change the station hoping to find some Air Supply or ABBA, and then I cranked up the volume . Well the car behaved in a similar manner, my one hand with firm control of the steering wheel swerved, the vehicles trajectory changed and I was quickly going where I was looking – off the road.

My dad stopped the exercise fairly quickly (his self preservation skills are massive), righted the moving projectile and explained his lesson. When I took my eyes off the road (lesson one) and looked elsewhere I ended up going elsewhere (lesson two). He then further explained that even when driving if my eyes (focus) were distracted and looking somewhere else, somewhere they should not be looking, the vehicle would be sure to follow. The vehicle goes where I am looking. Simple. Profound.

In life we have the same realizations. We go where we look. Positioning our life is not enough. We can have the right ideas, the proper motivation, the most noble of intentions, but if we are looking elsewhere we will go elsewhere. We go where we are looking.

Whatever captures your eyes, directs your feet.

Looking forward, onward, upward,
david