Today I left Bucharest to go home to my parents. My way home goes through one of the most beautiful places in Romania. It’s a very long road, but for me it’s totally worth the while. Normally it takes me five and a half to six hours to get home, depending on the traffic. I like to take this time to just enjoy the road, listen to music while singing from the top of my lungs and to just spend time with myself.
So I was on my way home and when I reached my favorite part, and I just felt a deep gratitude for being able to see such beauty, for the fact that my way home is so beautiful. And that even if it’s a very long road – 4.5 hours if I don’t make any stops and the traffic is almost non-existent – I still cherish every moment of it. And then I remembered the road to my ex-husband’s parents. Which took 2.5/3 hours tops. But it had nothing special. It was a normal road, two lanes on each side (it’s interesting because that’s what I dreamed of for the road home which has only one lane because it goes through the mountains). That road has everything I dreamed my road home would have. It’s fast but it doesn’t have what my road home has: mountains, rivers, green hills and forests, lakes, it’s just not majestic as this one is. My road home is so beautiful that every time I pass by, my heart skips a beat. And it’s interesting that no matter how often I go there, I feel the same thing every time. I just can’t get enough of it’s beauty. Just imagine that 70-80% of my road home is just like that, nature in all it’s glory…
This made me meditate on it and realize how beautiful it is and how much I love to drive through there. And I realized that if I had to choose between a faster road, which had nothing special, and this road, I would definitely choose this one, even if it’s much longer. Because I would rather see beauty and admire the nature, to be in awe of what I see. Because this gives me a feeling of grace, of love, of admiration for everything I see here and also for rising this kind of feelings inside me. And I realized that it’s actually the same with our path through life. We can get from A to B in different ways and we always want the fastest way there. We would like a GPS to tell us which is the shortest road to take. But actually the beauty of life is to choose the magical path instead of the fastest one. And I thought about it and I realized that I prefer to take the scenic route through life, rather than to take the fastest one, which has nothing special but helps me “gain time”.
So I asked myself… how is this helping me? Because, in the end, I would be “losing” a lot of time by doing that. It’s can’t be that easy. And the answer came so gracefully: if I have to choose between a life where I did fewer things, but very special ones and a life where I did a lot of things, but nothing special, nothing that makes my heart sing or skip a beat, what kind of life do I choose to live? And my answer was so clear: I choose to live a life where I take my time to do less things but where I enjoy every step of the journey which is a magical, spectacular one. And I love that about myself!
What kind of road will you choose for your life? Will you take the scenic route?
Copyright Bogdan Mustatea
