We got in the car, and the navigation told us it would take a few hours to get home. As we kept getting updates that traffic was building up ahead and our ETA kept getting later and later, we followed detour after detour and couldn't help feeling like we were going totally and completely out of our way and that we would never get home. Day turned into night. The cars in front of us crawled. We left that major highway and took that tiny side street only to encounter the same sea of brake lights.
We knew we were going to get home eventually, but we didn't know when. After each new time update, we sighed and someone cracked another joke about the traffic. We made up another song parody about traveling to pass the time. We called a friend, texted another, tried to keep spirits up.
We still knew we would get home eventually. How long it would take, we did not know. How much we would have to travel out of the way, we did not know. Where we were and how crossing that random bridge we'd never heard of before would help us get there, we did not know.
But we trusted that Waze and Google Maps knew what they were doing. (Kal v'chomer G-d, right?)
Rubbernecking, so not helpful. Watching what other people go through, for good or for bad, when you cannot help them, only slows you down. If we all stopped worrying about how fast other people are driving or what they're doing on the side of the road, we could focus better on what is going on in our cars, get where we're going faster.
Getting annoyed at the traffic is not helpful either. It doesn't help you get anywhere faster. Keeping yourself busy along the way, making sure your car has enough gas to get where you're going, knowing when you might need to ask the driver to make a stop or ask someone else to drive for a bit...are all important.
Still waiting for my "you have arrived at your destination" ...
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