Chalkboard Leads to Roads Less Traveled

Well, that was fun.

Watching 2021 fade into the past comes with mixed feelings. But in the end, the lessons learned from the massively disruptive and soul-crunching 2020 helped me better navigate the following twelve months. Surprisingly, 2020 changed me to the core – and in most ways, for the better.

My wife is a remarkably creative soul. She keeps a small chalkboard sitting on the countertop in the kitchen, where she creates and displays a theme or family charge for the coming year. For example, for 2021, she scratched out, “Drink the champagne.”

We were both still reeling from not seeing our adult kids for nearly a year due to COVID. We’d also lost our closest friend (cancer sucks) a few weeks earlier. Plugging into the uncertainty of what the coming year would hold, my wife latched onto the philosophy we can either cower in place and wait for the storm to pass or be reasonably careful and learn to dance in the rain.

And we danced in the rain for twelve months. 

Reflecting on the friend we lost, we realized he’d lived and fuller life in 50 some years than a handful of people who eeked out 100 birthdays.

In a way, “drinking the champagne” was an odd phrase for a couple of people who don’t drink much at all. But, instead, the scratching of letters represented celebrating doing things that make you a bit uncomfortable, stop needlessly avoiding participating in life, and quit putting off telling someone you love them until tomorrow. If you want to make a difference in the world, do it now – not someday.

One time we found ourselves so out of our comfort zone that we wondered if we’d lost our minds.

I remember us driving our four-wheel truck up the side of a mountain in West Texas, creeping along narrow and jagged single-track rock road, and all I heard was her switching between the following statements:

“Oh wow, it’s so beautiful – but don’t look.”

“Stay left, stay left, stay left, stay left.”

As we climbed higher and higher, knowing we would be the only vehicle allowed on the private road that day, we laughed at the absurdity of what we’d bitten off. Alone with only our wits and fading cell service, we had no choice to keep climbing above the tree line and into whatever was ahead. No one would look for us unless we didn’t check in that evening. And we had the key to the gate at the trailhead. 

After nearly an hour or so of white-knocked driving, the road flattened, spilling us out onto a small open space with a spectacular view of the next 25 miles. The blindingly blue sky violently contrasted the harsh yet muted colors of the desert floor. If the altitude didn’t take your breath away, the view did. The road less traveled, was indeed, worth it. 

Somehow we made it back down alive, but knowing we would forever be hooked on champagne, vintage 2021. 

Last year we lived with more love, kindness, and adventure. The payoff was wonderful. And for what it is worth, we don’t expect 2022 to be any different.

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