Have you ever been in a long line waiting to get someplace only to find out at the end you were in the wrong line? I had that experience over the weekend. My wife and I attended the NASCAR race over the weekend at LV Motor Speedway. There were over 175,000 people in attendance and everyone wanted to get out when the race was over. We knew it would take a while exit since we had been to the Busch race on Saturday, which took about 90 minutes to get to the freeway.
The 15 Freeway is the major artery for entry and exit to the track and this section of road is only two lanes. Add 175,000 people and you have a standstill. On Sunday we lined up a different way to get out of the track. We were in a line that was headed North out of the parking lot and you could see it led right up to the freeway. The line was three cars wide and moved slowly along.
When we finally got up to the exit of the track the line curved to the right along a frontage road. All of a sudden we were circling back around the track. The line crept along at a snails pace but we finally made it to the exit on the other side of the track. We could see the main street ahead but a strange thing happened. Instead of being able to turn right and head back to town, all of the exiting traffic had to turn left.
Here we were in the middle of the desert heading in a line that went on forever. It turns out that the access road went for six miles North and finally ended up on the 15 freeway, six miles above the track. We now had to go six miles south to just get back where we started. This was unbelievable! It took over 5 hours to get back to our hotel which was less than 10 miles from the track!
A precept of Steven Covey came to mind as we started and stopped in the middle of nowhere. “Begin with the end in mind”, played over and over in my head. How could I be so blind as to end up in this crazy line? After all, all these thousands of people were doing the same thing! How could so many people be so blind? If I had just asked somebody where the line went I would have never got in it. I would have exited out the south entrance just like we did on Saturday.
Following the crowd can be a dangerous thing. Unless you know the destination, the crowd can lead you places that you would never go on your own. When we examine the life roads that we are on we really need to know where we are going. We need a roadmap, directions, and a guide.
Do you have a roadmap for your life?
Have you sat down and planned out your destination?
Do you have written goals or are you just following the crowd???
Endlessly into the darkness…
Something to think about…
