Lessons from the beach - Walking Blind

Walking on the beach with my dog yesterday was an interesting experience. Over the winter the ice and snow has grown into hills and mountains, melted, refrozen and created many interesting and fascinating landscapes.

Yesterday, however, we had a couple inches of light fluffy snow that coated the entire landscape. It was just beautiful, and very interesting to walk on.

All that pretty snow was too light to pack but it covered over thousands of tiny hills, bumps and holes that we could fall into as we walked. I discovered this danger very quickly but I really wanted to spend some time outdoors in this beautiful setting, so on we went.

My dog ran ahead of me and, after a while I started to notice some things. We were walking much slower than we normally do at the beach. Our 'blindness' and 'ignorance' of the landscape made us cautious so we slowed down. Then I noticed that when we were backtracked to head back to the truck we had a different pattern. We tended to follow the path we had made on our way out, with the exception of areas where we could see deep prints - a sure sign that you were going to step down into a rut or hole.

Just as when we choose change in our life, we had to traverse a new and unknown landscape. And, once we'd been down a particular path before, it got easier. We knew where to go most of the time, as well as what areas to avoid. We gained confidence and speed.

I had a wonderful time and I'm glad I chose to face the unknown and blaze a path.