Life Adjustments

When I was young, I thought driving a car was mostly about pointing it in the right direction and pressing the gas pedal. As it turns out, that’s about as accurate as saying marriage consists of owning matching towels.

The truth is that driving requires constant adjustments.

Even on a perfectly straight road, your hands are making tiny corrections. A gust of wind pushes you left. You nudge right. The pavement slopes. You compensate. Another car drifts a little too close to your lane, perhaps because its driver is texting, eating a burrito, and applying mascara simultaneously. You adjust again.

Life works the same way.

At least that’s what I’ve observed after decades of making adjustments, many of them necessary because of my own spectacular miscalculations.

When I was younger, I imagined that successful people charted a course and followed it flawlessly. Then I became an adult and discovered that most of us are simply trying not to drive into a ditch.

Businesses require adjustments. Relationships require adjustments. Health requires adjustments. Even semi-retirement, which many people imagine as one long nap interrupted by lunch, requires adjustments.

The irony is that we often view adjustments as evidence that something has gone wrong.

Actually, adjustments are evidence that we’re moving.

No one adjusts a parked car.

Years ago, if a plan failed, I would be disappointed. Today, I’d also be disappointed, but with much greater experience and efficiency, I’m able to make the appropriate adjustments faster.  That’s what passes for wisdom at my age.

I’ve also learned that over-correcting can be worse than under-correcting. A small turn of the steering wheel keeps the car on the road. A violent jerk sends everyone scrambling for the seat belt they should have fastened in the first place.

Life’s best adjustments are often small. A little more patience. A little more exercise. A little less certainty that we’re right about everything.

I’m still working on that last one.

The road ahead is never perfectly straight. Circumstances change. People change. We change.

The goal isn’t to eliminate adjustments. The goal is to keep moving forward while making them.

And if you occasionally miss an exit, take comfort from this thought: some of the most memorable parts of life begin with the words, “Well, I certainly didn’t mean to end up here.”

Alan