Back in March 2018 my wife and I were lucky enough to visit Spain. After 4 incredible days in Barcelona, we’d planned to rent a car and head north, visiting some glorious medieval villages. Our first stop was about an hour up the road, the Old Jewish Quarter in Girona.
We paid a bit extra for a car with GPS, voiced by a polite but rather firm English woman who guided us out of the narrow twisting lanes of the Gracia neighborhood in Barcelona and out onto the big, modern Spanish freeway heading north. We decided to call her Gwendolyn and were very grateful for her help.
About 20 kilometers south of Girona though, our trust in Gwendolyn was put to the test. She was quite insistent that we take the next exit, despite very clear road signs instructing us to keep going on the freeway. That was weird.
But I had faith in Gwendolyn and took her recommended exit. We were suddenly on a very busy and rather narrow four lane highway, crammed with big trucks. We began heading east, away from the coast and up into the hills. The heavy traffic and curving road spiked our stress level and after a few close calls we took a sketchy looking exit to try and get our bearings.
After driving on this blasted road for nearly half an hour, Gwendolyn told us Girona was a mere hour and 40 minutes away! The screen showed us on a great looping detour up into the mountains. Yikes! Clearly there was some crazy mistake. Ignoring Gwen’s protests, we headed back the way we’d come to get back on the actual freeway.
Sure enough, once we got back on the freeway it was about 20 more minutes to Girona. We’d just wasted an entire hour! To make matters worse, we couldn’t figure out how to get Gwendolyn to shut the hell up without turning off the GPS entirely. This was a big deal because she kept insisting we take each and every exit on the way to Girona, even though they clearly led off into the empty countryside.
I’m sorry to say that Gwendolyn’s increasingly unwelcome and seemingly psychotic travel advice provoked some rather coarse language on my part. At first this may have shocked my poor stressed out wife, but soon enough she joined right in cursing poor Gwen.
Girona was amazing. The Old Jewish Quarter is absolutely worth a visit. But I think we were both a bit haunted by the mystery of faithless Gwendolyn. Was she possessed or what? Should we try and find some Holy Water? Before continuing our journey north, we decided to investigate.
Delving deep into the menus of the GPS – layer upon layer of settings, we found the simple but idiotic answer. An option to AVOID TOLL ROADS had been chosen by someone for some reason at some point. And that big beautiful “freeway” was in fact a toll road – we’d paid a €7 toll just a few kilometers south of Girona. Lovely Gwendolyn was just trying to be helpful after all.
If we hadn’t turned around, that one hidden setting meant we would have burned an extra €20 or more in petrol and cost us a few precious hours of sightseeing. Not cool!
Can you guess where I’m going with this?
How many of us have crazy default settings we’re completely unaware of? We’re trying so hard to reach our destination, but our own inner-Gwendolyn sends us off on a wild goose chase. When our life goes off the rails it’s tempting to blame everyone and everything in sight. But honestly, it’s probably some messed up default setting in our programming.
You might say that all of us are born and raised in the backseat of our own car. Our folks are driving. They set the course, put it on cruise control and even pre-set the stations on the radio buttons. By the time we climb into the driver’s seat and take the wheel, our lives are pretty much on autopilot.
It’s important to realize this! We can change our own settings – if we know they’re there. If we know to go looking for them. It isn’t even all that hard, really. A lot of what I do with clients is really helping them take their life off autopilot.
So what’s your own Girona? What sort of life are you steering for? And what settings, programs, vows or beliefs might be sending you off in the wrong direction?
copyright 2018 Rob Nelson
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