When Small Is Big

Small things can be more powerful than very big things. Our lives are not lived in giant events. Feelings manipulated and orchestrated by producers and writers cannot be sustained.

What we need is a steady stream of small encouragements to remind us that God has a plan for us all. Once we open our eyes, they are endless. Once we connect them to our Creator, they provide steady meaning, purpose, and refreshing power.

Going Off-Screen!

In times like these, you can’t wait for the fun to show up at your front door. You need a release from the constant adrenaline lockdown loop called the news. You have plenty of your own bad news. Why do you need professional help?

What you need is help finding the fun. You need to laugh. You need inspiration. The professionals will never point out the beauty of life. We need to go out, hunt it down, and drag a memory home with us.

My suggestion is that you go off-screen. (Gasp!)

The reasons are obvious . . . which means it’s right in my wheelhouse.

  • Fear grows with focus and shrinks with perspective.
  • While stress probably won’t kill you today, it certainly makes you miserable.
  • Nature is mesmerizing, ever-changing, and scientifically great for you.
  • We love an adventure that we control.
  • It’s fun!

There’s plenty more but it’s time to get going.

The Road Not (Yet) Taken

I could wax eloquent about the road, the journey, the path of life, but here I just want to focus on getting away. Leaving the old, familiar problems behind helps us see what life is like without them. It is the great backing away to get perspective. It is more than just escape. It’s looking at things from a larger perspective. Problems grow to giants when you focus only on them. Forcing your brain to look away is sometimes the only way to break the spell.

For this, the trip is the thing. The destination is just a progress marker on the journey. A road trip is not about the destination; it’s about the transformation.

On this trip, our destination was a small town called Bell Buckle. Suzie and I have been there many times. But not lately. It was time and we needed a goal. This was more for finding a place to stop exploring than anything.  We have been known to get caught up in finding what’s over the next hill until we are too far away to get home.

The plan was to inspire; not to run away.

The route would take us along some of our favorite roads, familiar beautiful sights that we hadn’t seen in a while. But a sign prompted us to turn off early and take a road we’d never seen before.

It was a small two-lane highway that connected small communities through the Tennessee hills. There were picturesque churches and farmhouses, hilltop vistas and snuggled valleys, barns and farms, horses and goats. It was too curvy to take pictures and enjoy the scenery so I gave my phone a day off, too. We pointed and oo’d and ahhed.

It was hard to keep my eyes on the road so we drove too slow for the locals and pulled off often to let them pass. They were inoculated to the beauty they saw every day. For us, that one road was worth the entire day.

All of that beauty had been just sitting there waiting for us to discover for all this time. I was disappointed it ended so soon.

The Secret Power of Bell Buckle

The most powerful thing about arriving at Bell Buckle was not the town. It was cute and quaint and entertaining but there was nothing there we really needed. What we needed was to choose a destination and get there. We needed somewhere new or at least somewhere not old and familiar. The exploration was part of the fun but it’s actually bigger than that.

What we needed was control.

Many studies have shown that a sense of control over your life is essential to happiness, but in a difficult world, we don’t have a lot of real control. It’s not just the government that seizes control of our lives. We are controlled by our dreams which send us in predetermined directions. We are controlled by family and who we choose to love. We are limited by our abilities and options. Doctors tell us what to eat and teachers tell us what to think and marketers tell us what to buy.

But if you have time and freedom, you get to determine, for better or worse, where you go and what you do. Restoring this essential feeling of control is vital. It’s not an option. It’s not a good idea. It is a necessity.

Bell Buckle did that for us. Awesome!

Most of the Award-Winning Town was closed for Labor Day but we never planned to stay long or buy things. We wandered through a couple of their hyper-cute stores and even passed up the ice cream parlor in order to get back on the road. This town deserves further exploration but today the trip was the thing.

The Adventure Home

Even though going back the same way we’d come looks entirely different on the return trip, we chose to head home through Wartrace and Shelbyville. We ran into a small adventure (the best kind) when all the restaurants were closed due to a widespread computer outage. Adventure is another word for trouble and you have to allow for it in all of life’s fun.

Driving up Hwy 41A, we were so surprised by the Nash Family Creamery that I had to turn around and go back. It looked like a movie set rather than a working family dairy but we made plans to return. Their website alone will probably give you a sugar high. Suzie loves sunflowers so we will be going back in October for the Sunflower Patch.

The Payoff: Perspective

The point of this trip, however, was not high adventure or to create travel blog copy. The point was what happens to you when you step away from your life and get out of your own head.

You get perspective, if only for a brief moment. Because perspective is hard to get and impossible to keep.

Soon you get sucked back into a routine and forget about life outside your own experience. You start living inside your mind, which can be a very scary place. you lose sight of progress and miss opportunities. You can easily get so involved doing the “what” of your life and forget the all-important “why?”

Priorities tend to shift which causes you to start and stop many things instead of developing persistence. Goals fade. Plans can also be seen more clearly from afar when you see other people and places. Sometimes a break is what you need to sort things out.

Relationships are difficult and it’s easy to get petty when you fall into your own experience. It’s easier to cut someone else a break when you get back a feeling of control. And we all need a break.

Nature alone has been shown to have big health benefits, easily having as much depression-fighting power as some of our best medicines.

If you’re not in a bad mental state, the resulting energy gives you a creative boost. Many of my songwriter friends do their best work in their cars. I always come back from a trip with business and writing ideas percolating and a renewed focus at work.

All this from just wandering around?

A short road trip won’t change the world or solve all of your problems. But it just might change your mind. And that’s probably enough.