Roadworks, Stoics and Me

What's in the way is the way

We never know what might be around the corner, but whatever is there, don't think of it as an obstacle. Photo of the track near Evergreen.

Travelling between Albany and Perth on State Route 30 always provides me with a lesson for life.

I refer to the signs warning me that I may have to stop for roadworks. And sure enough, I do have to. Usually two or three times.

According to online information, it should take me 5 hours and 2 minutes to travel from my home in Lowlands to our daughter’s place in Cottesloe. It always takes longer, of course. There’s a toilet stop, a lunch stop, and those capricious red lights for roadworks.

I decide when to stop for the toilet and lunch, but have no control over the stops I must make for graders, bulldozers, and trucks full of water, gravel or tar to accomplish their appointed tasks.

As I apply the brakes and join the queue of vehicles awaiting a green light, an automatic wish arises that I’d arrived here a bit earlier to avoid this holdup to my plans. My life was going smoothly until this happened. It’s not a disaster, exactly, but it is something that need not have happened.

While the milky day moon moves incrementally across the sky, invisible comets whizz past narrowly missing the earth, and canola crops ripen both sides of the highway, I battle with the thought that this unplanned stop on my trip should not have happened to me. I can hear Captain Wallace B. Binghamton’s plaintive cry in McHale’s Navy when things go wrong for him:

Why is it always me?

 A Message from the Stoics

Stoics, who believe in eliminating toxic emotions like anger, anxiety and annoyance because they always make situations worse, not better, have a short, sharp philosophical mantra they live by and strongly advise me to heed:

What’s in the way, is the way.

As the minutes tick over at the relentless red light, orange dust settles on my freshly washed car, and the roadworker operating the switch adjusts his hat, swipes a fly and takes a bored swig of water, I say this over and over to myself. What’s in the way, is the way . . .  What’s in the way, is the way . . .

By the time I’ve repeated this mantra twenty times, the truth of the words sinks in.

This unplanned stop on my way to Perth is the way to Perth.

What’s in the way is the way.

Or, to put it another way:

What stands in the way becomes the way.

Or, to put it in my own words:

There’s no such thing as an obstacle.

What's In the Way Is the Way

What seems to be an obstacle to my plans is merely life unfolding around me.

If I see a situation as an obstacle, then negative emotions cloud my thinking and result in misguided actions that try to avoid or deny what must be faced. Doing this isn’t helpful.

So, I sit in my motionless vehicle and face the red light.

I am alive. I have a car with four puncture-proof tyres and air-conditioning. Perhaps a slice of almond cake with a side dish of whipped cream awaits me at the Williams Woolshed café. Soon I will be hugging grandchildren and viewing the sun setting over the Indian Ocean.

In the meantime, I will calmly wait here for the red light to turn green, because this is the way to Perth.

With love, Marlane