When inspiration takes you down side roads for a meandering moment, space is opened between what must be done and what is possible. Traveling along the road of life reminds me that we often focus on an endpoint while forgetting to make time for inspiration along the way. Why are we always in such a hurry?  Do we actually ever arrive in life?

In a hurried life, paths we choose may not allow time for whimsical detours or perceived frivolities.  Likewise, when we travel, our planned arrival time typically sets in motion the fastest and most efficient route to our destination.

I still mourn a missed opportunity during my last road trip to stop for a moment, to capture a “photograph to be” calling to me, once the goal of arriving took over as the priority.

Remember when time seemed to last forever.  You didn’t count the minutes or the hours because you didn’t know they even existed.  Your days were filled with adventure, entertaining inspiration, while learning and growing.

At what point did we allow a clock to determine our life’s path?  When did our accomplishments become measured between numbers and our purpose quantified by a dictated plan on a to-do list?

Once inspiration is lost, motivation fades and energy wanes.

Productivity is a sum of variables and can be looked upon as so much more than a completed checklist of tasks.  So, I remind myself to take the time to savor the joys of inspiration.  Without it, life seems drab and daily motions become robotic.  

Our life may indeed hold a hidden algorithm, but we can always input new variables. 

Look around you and sense your current environment.  We were meant to do more than simply survive, we were meant to use our senses and dream of possibilities.  Anything is possible especially when time is not dictating what is possible.  Inspiration changes the clock. 

As we head toward a planned destination, the joy of inspiration will expand the frame along the way.

The stars come out every night, but our view of those stars changes with our perspective.  On days of hurry or disinterest, we miss them completely.  On nights where gloom clouds their view, they may not appear at all.  When we make the time to see them, we know the plan is so much bigger than what exists in the 24 hours we are given each day.  

Hope lives in the inspiration of living life to its fullest, when we remember to smell the flowers, listen to our hearts, take the pictures, and gaze at the stars.

Take some time to meander down the path of inspiration.

-Erika K Rothwell