The Maze of Life

A—MAZE—ING!!!

So much of life feels like a maze.  Each step can take us against a wall or into a new passage way.  Make it 3-D and your options expand—they call it hitting the glass ceiling because it looks like a good option.  The maze of life involves every aspect of our journey be it relationships, family or work life.  You name it. Each choice leads in one direction or another.

One way to navigate the maze is very simple. “If you don’t know where you are going,

any road will do.”   (Lewis Carroll) Or, if everything is random, then just choose and see where you end up.  Both of these are like buying a car.  Go to the dealership with miles of new or used cars.  Tell the sales rep. that “Oh, it doesn’t matter what I buy, I just need a car.”  Watch what happens!

The second way does not work well either. Try going to the same car dealer with such a tight set of requirements and see what happens.  The exact, color, year, mileage and good luck with the price.  The sales rep will see you coming and go the other way—and that would be a first for anyone selling cars! 

There is a third option and it comes from a personal story. My wife and I went to CarMax—the superstore—because our son needed a car in college.  We went with one car in mind—a Volvo—but when we got there, we saw an Infinitti G20 with the right mileage, decent color, airbags and some other things on the checklist.  And—the price was cheaper than the Volvo. The cincher was that we had owned one and loved it. 

Now, this car was located in the very center of the showroom. A lot of cars had to be moved for us to test drive it.  We also checked out the Volvo option as a comparison. How did we make the choice in that maze of options?  Probably the familiarity and price sold it. 

Here comes the good part. They took our trade-in to assess what they would give us.  The salesman dropped it off and another then moved it mistakenly into an acre of cars. They hunted that car for over an hour.  If it does not matter, then put the car anywhere! 

The point is that as we navigate the maze of life, we do have experience and those of others.  We do believe that life has a point for us—holds out some value that we hold dear. I also assume that we have some motivation to make choices for our benefit and those of others.  So choose based on your values, experience – and what will open further doors to more options. 

The real concern is that when we become so worn out in the maze that we no longer find our choices meaningful, beneficial or a gateway to our future.  Resignation.    We just give up. 

This third way of navigating the maze is that it is the journey itself in which we grow.  There is no arriving, only the journey itself.  I believe that Jesus had something like that in mind when we put together two of his guiding principles—heaven is in every moment and seek the kingdom of heaven first. That’s what makes the journey of life A-MAZE-ING—it holds out heaven in every moment and we can seek it.  Jesus said something else.  You will find it.