Road Work Ahead

How many of my most important moments happened due to careful planning?  The big ones, like getting my driver's license or college degree, but most of the really crucial moments in my life seemed to happen through pure serendipity.  My big-step-up  job at US HealthCare?  A colleague's casual comment.  My life-changing job at Prudential?  Bumped into Pete Boericke chucking twigs off a sidewalk.  John?  An ice storm.  

A person made a comment on the radio & suddenly I'm writing a book.  Wasn't planned, but so right.  

Even when I do carefully plan things, they inevitably produce unintended consequences.  Take this book - hadn't thought about how it would feel, returning to books I haven't thought about in years, the swell of memories reading certain passages.    

Taken totally unawares as I listened yesterday to my priceless audiotape of Stephen Covey on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Oh, I'd expected to have some response, since it was the book that triggered my interest in personal & family dynamics, but stunned at how deeply.

It was in the early 1990s that I was introduced to Stephen Covey & his 7 Habits.  Heading up to a gal pal weekend up in the Catskills, leaving right from work, realized my music cassettes had been left at home.  I whipped into a nearby Barnes & Noble, looking for something long enough for the 4-hour drive.  There it was - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, on four cassettes.  In a rush, grabbed it without giving much thought beyond it was the right amount of time.  

Never would I have guessed how those seven habits would change my life.  

Up to then, self-help/personal dynamics books had no appeal to me.  If they were so gosh darn helpful, how come people kept buying more?  Shouldn't just a couple have been enough?  So it was with a growing sense of startled awe that I listed to Stephen Covey share his insights, even one ringing true.  

After that, I was off & running - so many different voices changing my perspective, my life.  But as enthusiastic as I was, as ardent about her reading or listening to some of them, I could not get Mom interested in what they shared.  Oh, she let me read the occasional section or play a particular bit, but more than that - no.  

Then fate stepped in.  Prudential HealthCare was purchased by Aetna.  I was suddenly about to be out of a job.  

My colleagues, most of whom had only worked for Prudential, were devastated.  After the announcement, they walked around, shell shocked.  Time after time, someone would ask me, "What are you doing when you leave Prudential?"  Being more professionally battle scarred, it didn't overwhelm me.  Looking for a way to respond that would illustrate my optimism about the future, I came upon the perfect reply.  Whenever anyone asked The Question, my face would light up as I answered, "What am I doing when I leave Prudential?  I'm going to DisneyWorld!"  

And we did.  A couple months later, on the day after Halloween, off we went, Mom & I on our ultimate road trip.  

I'd planned the trip as a special treat for Mom, who had longed to see EPCOT ever since Walt Disney announced it.  It never occurred to me that, at 87, she might be too old for such long drives, with almost a week at DisneyWorld.  

We had a blast, planning our stops along the route, with overnight stays in Williamsburg, Charleston & Jacksonville on the way down, at several country inns tucked into the Great Smoky & Blue Ridge Mountains on the way home.  

it meant the world to me that this trip be the second greatest vacation of Mom's life.  I succeeded beyond wildest dreams.  Little did I know that the road to DisneyWorld would turn out to be Mom's "road to Damascus"!  

If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.