She had to get to work.
The woman lived in a suburb and commuted in toward the city nearly every day. Monday through Friday she worked, Saturday and Sunday, she played. The city had everything she’d ever need. She planned on moving there someday, but for now, it was too expensive. She would wait and always keep an eye open for a cheap place.
She wasn’t originally from there. She’d moved for school and never left, she loved the place too much to go back home, or chase a career anywhere else. One thing she’d noticed was that there always seemed to be a lot of road construction in the area.
One morning, she was taking her usual route to work when she realized that the street was littered with orange signs and cones. The speed limit had been temporarily reduced and traffic was backed up. She wasn’t much of a planner and therefore, didn’t have much time to spare in her commute. She was late to work that day.
The next morning, she figured she’d take another path to her office. The road was lined with cars and angry brake lights glared at her while she sat in place, fretting about her imminent tardiness. This time, she had the sense to call ahead and explain herself.
The next day, the girl tried yet another set of streets and encountered more orange cones. This time, she was even yelled at by a flagger, who told her to “Turn around! Go another way!” She was pissed and might have flipped double-birds his direction. His angry outburst had merited her disdain. Also? She was late for work again. Fortunately, her boss was understanding about the situation, he remembered commuting before he got his apartment in the city.
For more than a week, the girl was held up by road work, bad traffic signals and poorly designed intersections. It seemed that every path she tried had its flaws, most of them major. She couldn’t imagine that a city could have constant construction like this without any semblance of ease of travel or at least improvement anywhere. She complained about it to her boss every morning until he finally said, “It’s funny, you’d think that we’d eventually figure it out. Instead, we just keep going over the same things over and over again. We keep making the same mistakes, too. But somehow, people make it around the city it all and get where they need to. By the way, if you’re late one more time, you’re fired.”
Hmmm… What was the motivation for writing this article.
Robert, I’d like to know what your guess would be…
Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?
It’s time to make some changes.
I believe so. I was thinking about this in context of theology. The end-result is always the same, but someone’s always looking for a new way to get there… new philosophies and approaches aren’t necessarily any better than the old ways 🙂
I wish I could say I haven’t done the same thing… the same things over and over expecting different results… You know what that is the definition of…
It’s more than crazy, it’s ignorance and love of self… The root of all evil.
Man, I went over the top didn’t I?
Boise is a mess right now. We have construction EVERYWHERE and it’s annoying. I’m imagining it’s because it’s end of fiscal year for several organizations (Ada County Highway District, maybe?) and they need to spend their money. But here’s the deal, we make our own roads going all sorts of places, (into the city, for instance– or we could go all metaphorical) and each time we use different philosophies, but how many of them actually work any better than something that’s been around longer?
I thought you were describing Chicago, where we have two seasons: winter and construction. But as to your point, I always think of a story that C.S.Lewis would tell. A grizzled old RAF officer told him “I’ve encountered God out in the desert and the experience was so much more real than when I go to church or read the Bible, so I won’t waste my timewith religion.” Lewis replied “My dear sir, you can go to the beach and feel the sand and splash in the water and it will be much more real than looking at a map. A map is just a bit of coloured paper, but if you intend to get anywhere you need that map. You need to rely on the countless men and women that went before you.”
I love Lewis and can only hope that I’m as good as he was. And you just made Chicago sound like hell… I hate winter and construction is making me crazy right now. I think that the Highway district overseeing all of our construction ends its fiscal year in September, so they’re trying to cash out everything they’ve got so they can fill their coffers with as much cash next year… I could be wrong but a million projects all bubbles up at the same time and they’re all impeding my way. BUT, getting to the philosophical point… who said that new is better? We’ve been “building roads” to God for a long time and yet, too many people still haven’t met Him or don’t get it… I’m all about novelty, so I should have been sucked into this and maybe have when I read different theological philosophies… but I guess I see the point that many have tried to take. That totally sounds pretentious. Oh man…
I don’t think it’s pretension to think about such things. Unless I’m pretentious too…OH NO!