The Place Beneath the Traffic

This was one of those weeks you’d rather avoid.

Uncertainty. Disruption. Frustration. A few things not going according to plan.

And in the middle of it, a friend reminded me of something on the phone this week.

When disruption arrives, it can be almost impossible to believe this, but it remains true:

There is gold here.

It may just take some time to find it.

I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between the first half of life and the second.

The first half of life is largely about building the container.

We build a name. A career. A family. A reputation. A personality. A place in the world. We figure out what we’re good at, what people expect from us, and how to make our way through life.

All of that matters.

But somewhere along the way, a different invitation arrives.

Instead of continuing to build the container, we begin to wonder about its contents.

What is actually inside?

What was there before the résumé, the accomplishments, the failures, the opinions of others, and all the identities we accumulated along the way?

Maybe the second half of life is less about becoming someone new and more about discovering what has been there all along.

And maybe that matters so much because our exterior worlds aren’t getting any simpler.

If I had to describe modern life with a metaphor, I’d say it feels like driving through a city where every road is under construction.

Traffic jams everywhere.

Orange cones.

Detours.

Hazard signs.

Road closures.

And very few green lights.

But when I reflect honestly on my own journey, I wonder if life has always been this way.

Think about first grade. Junior high. High school. College. The early years of a career. The early years of marriage. Becoming a parent. And now, for me, parenting teenagers.

When you’re actually in the middle of any of these seasons, there rarely seems to be a long stretch of green lights.

There’s always something.

Something uncertain. Something changing. Something we wish would move faster. Something we wish would slow down. Something we’re trying to fix, understand, accomplish, protect, or hold together.

Which brings me back to something I discovered in one of the worst traffic jams of my life in 2012.

Go inward.

In the midst of all the noise, find some silence.

In the midst of all the movement, find some stillness.

In the midst of all the demands, find some solitude.

Because somewhere underneath all the chaos and complication is a reality that is remarkably simple and remarkably quiet.

And I think the work of the second half of life is learning how to return there.

Again and again.

To find the face you had before you had a name.

Before you had a bio.

Before you had a reputation to protect or a personality to maintain.

Before you learned what you thought the world expected you to be.

There is something underneath all of that.

Something simple.

Something quiet.

Something that doesn’t need the traffic to disappear in order to be okay.

The heavy lifting is learning to emerge from that place each morning and then get in the car.

Pull out of the garage.

And drive straight back into this chaotic, complicated world.

The construction will still be there.

The traffic will still back up.

The light will still turn red when you desperately want it to be green.

But perhaps we begin to experience it differently.

There’s an old idea that we don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

If that’s true, maybe our greatest work isn’t rearranging every circumstance outside of us.

Maybe it is tending to the place from which we see them.

So that’s my thought for the weekend:

Go inward.

Find the place in you that is simple and quiet.

Sit there for a while.

And then, when you’re ready, get back in the car.

The traffic may not have changed.

But perhaps the driver has.

A question for the weekend:

Where, in the midst of all this chaos and complication, can I find simplicity and quiet?

Ashton