Most of us get out of bed, go to work doing what we must, or if we are fortunate, what we want for a living. At the end of the day we go home, out to dinner, indulge in our hobby or spend time with family and friends, then we go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Our weekends, or days off, differ only in that we have a different routine for those days. We march or shuffle along in our individual brain cloud, day after day, until we are old. People call it the daily grind.

But, sometimes, we trip or stumble and fall out of step with our routine. The majority of us will jump right back into our normal shuffled march quickly forgetting that we were, for a brief moment, out of time, and that we had a moment to see the world from a different perspective. However, some of us see the opportunity being out of step gives us. We see the world, the grind, as a limiting agent and take that stumble or trip up as a chance to explore our world and change our daily grind into something more interesting. A person might discover an unknown truth about themselves, or idea that enriches their lives. They might meet someone they would never have known if they hadn’t stumbled or tripped. They could, if they wanted, find a new direction to travel, even if they still have a daily grind.

For some, however, a trip or stumble sends them wandering, lost and confused, across a barren world, filled with obstacles that baffle and discombobulate them, creating stress and strife. It takes them longer than most to get back into the daily routine, or to find another purpose, but they eventually do, or they stay lost and confused.

Many people, and this is sad to me, will turn their backs on change, preferring to live in their same old boring world, day in and day out, until all they have to look forward to is old age, illness, and death. I don’t understand not taking the road less traveled, or taking the opportunity to climb a new mountain to discover what is on the other side. Life is an adventure. Even the daily grind can be disrupted and interesting in itself, if you bother to look up instead of down at your feet.

Stumbles and trip ups may make us fall down, and getting up might be harder than expected. The struggle makes us stronger, so we are less likely to fall down again, at least not for the same reason. Our perspective is changed from being so far down we have to work hard to stand on an even keel again. Lying there can give one a different idea of how people in that position live and see their world, but at the end of the day one can stew in their misery or find a way to crawl out of it and move forward toward a better place in life.

I stumble regularly. One thing I have learned is that I need to grab the opportunity to change myself, my world, my direction, or my ideas. I think we all need to look at the obstacles in our lives as something to overcome, or at least climb on, to see the better world ahead. I want to die having a grand adventure, even if it is only managing to get from my rocking chair to the mail box and back every day. There might be something really interesting in that box, or not, but I won’t know unless I take a chance on stumbling.