True Wisdom is Found in Your Rear View Mirror

Dear fellow roadie,

In the first days of October last year I drove I-40 West from Alabama to San Diego via Oklahoma City and Sacramento. It was a beautiful fall drive and one of it’s greatest pleasures, that I mentioned in an article at that time, was that most of the trip I had sunrise ahead of me and sunset directly in my rear view mirror. A friend reminded me of that today.

Sunset in the rear view mirror is a wonderful metaphor, isn’t it? In the first place, it’s a great image for letting things go. So many things need to be let go, friend’s that don’t last, jobs lost, dreams that didn’t work like we wanted, the errors of others, our own mistakes… so many things. Let them go. Drive on.

Let them retreat in the rear view mirror. Let them grow smaller and smaller. Let them fade from view, lost in the distance like all we pass on the road. Sigh a sigh or two of sadness and release, and drive on.

Doing this, we ultimately gain the truly important wisdom of hindsight. Hindsight = Wisdom. We can do a Rear View Mirror Review to access that wisdom. Look in that mirror, remembering images seen there, asking, Where have I been? Now that I’m further down the road, how does that memory appear from here? What did I learn about me, about life, what skills did I gain, what would I do differently?

The answers to those questions? Great gifts of wisdom! Accumulated, they amount to troves of acquired hindsight wisdom, and acquired wisdom is the point of all experience. Gain experience, get wise.

However, to get the wisdom it has to pass in the rear view mirror, we have to let it go. No letting it go, no wisdom. Wisdom is the perk of letting go.

Letting go can be hard, we’ve all gotten cramps in our hands from hanging on to things too long, lol. But using the rear view mirror metaphor can help, especially knowing the reward will, with hindsight, be wisdom.

Perhaps this week we could do a Rear View Mirror Review on a thing or two, picking through the memory for the nuggets so we can let the rest of it move behind us in the rear view mirror.

Let’s all meet up at the crossroads of Wisdom and Letting Go, that would be fun wouldn’t it?! I can see it now, all of us arriving one evening near dusk in our campers, smart cars, Harleys, trucks, caddies, antiques, junkers, bicycles, little blue vans…. We’d bring food and wood and make a big campfire and gather around to share a meal and stories of the road traveled and what we’ve learned. See you there.

Much love, and blessing for the road,
Ma HuLiLi