Side trips are definitely NOT detours. You have no option with detours except to follow them if you want to continue on to your destination. You may be totally unfamiliar with how the detour will merge with the particular road you are on, or when, nor do you know how much time it will take. Most of the time, one views detours with disgust… and perhaps a bit of concern since you don’t know how long a detour will impact on your schedule. Most people moan the entire time they are on the detour rather than enjoying a new perspective.
Side trips, on the other hand, are planned excursions from the norm. Unmistakably though, they are part of our life’s journey because we incorporate them into our lives; they are a planned event. A side trip can be a vacation or it can simply be a new way of getting to where we’re going. But it is also a known, you know how you will get from point A to point B. I’ve always enjoyed side trips simply because it would be a new ‘adventure’ since I had never been this way or on this road.
Why do we take side trips? What do these ‘excursions’ provide for us? Sometimes there are absolutely no reasons for the side trip and we don’t even try and hide it – these are often called ‘vacations’. At other times we just want a break from the norm and a side trip will provide this ‘escape’, a kind of clearing the cobwebs time. My questions really relate to what you do with your side trips: planned or spontaneous? Do they fulfill their ‘function’?
I would recommend that you never lightly dismiss a side trip, regardless of purpose. These trips can provide you with untold opportunities to make discoveries. If it is a vacation, then it’s a great time to rest, relax, and reassess. If it is a ‘different’ way of getting to where you’re going then enjoy the new vistas that greet your eyes. Side trips are wonderful opportunities for us regardless of their reason to be. The question isn’t so much where are you going, but how.
…how are you going?
