Over the past couple weeks, I feel like my life has been seventy percent saying “yes” to each amazing social opportunity that comes my way while squeezing every last gorgeous drop of awesome out of the summer, and thirty percent dozing in my bed or laying on my couch in ratty cotton shorts and a t-shirt, sipping non-alcoholic beverages out of a mason jar through a bendy straw whilst watching Disney movies.  If there could be a theme song for that part of my life, it would definitely be Fergie’s “Glamorous.”  (You forgot about that song, didn’t you? You. Are. Welcome).

Tonight, I met my friends Brittany and Karen in Millennium Park for “Music in the Park.”  I packed my backpack full of cheese, crackers, spicy hummus, cracked pepper Wheat Thins, and lime LaCroix, and headed to the blue line.  As I swayed in my seat to the ebb and flow of the El, my arms wrapped around my backpack full of snacks, my eyelids felt heavy, and I fought back yawns.  I had zero reason to be tired, other than the fact that I stayed up until midnight last night watching “Bridget Jones’ Baby,” until I could no longer handle the sight of Renee Zellweger’s surgically altered face.  Even given my late bedtime, I dozed until ten and then met my mom for lunch in the West Loop.  Rough life, I know. Again….zero reason to be tired.

I got off the train at Washington, and as I worked my way toward the park, my yawning intensified. I decided I definitely needed a coffee, so I ducked into the Starbucks at the corner of Washington and Wabash.  As I dumped whole milk into my tall hot coffee, an older woman speaking broken English came in to tell the barista that she “still couldn’t find it.”  While she waited on the next customer, the barista struggled to give directions to the woman, and I decided I should put my money where my mouth is, and step in to talk to this stranger who I might be able to help.  Turns out the older woman had been at a different Starbucks with a friend, had left for some reason, and now couldn’t find her way back.  She had apparently found two other Starbucks but was having serious difficulty navigating to the shop located at Michigan and Randolph.  I said I was headed to Millennium Park and would walk with her to Michigan Avenue and then point her in the correct direction.  Before I left, I checked with the barista that Randolph was just one block north of Washington.

As I walked with the woman from Wabash to Michigan, I explained to her that at the “big street” in front of us she was going to turn left, and then go the next “big street” which was Randolph.  As we walked, she kept asking if she just had to “go straight.”  Yes, I told her, but first, she had to turn left.  I think it was a language barrier, but she was having quite a bit of trouble with the idea that she had to turn left until we actually got to the corner of Michigan and Washington, and I pointed to the left and said: “go that way.”  “Go straight?” she said.  “Yes,” I answered, “go straight.”

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the non-linear nature of human existence, and the nearly overwhelming human compulsion to think about our lives in a linear context.  Whether it’s in our professional lives (go to college, go to grad school, get a job, climb the professional ladder, get a promotion, save a bunch of money, retire etc.), or our personal lives (date a bunch of people, meet the one, get engaged, get married, get a dog, buy a home, start a family, raise a family, grow old together etc.).  We all know, of course, that life is never linear, but its twists and turns are so much better glimpsed and understood in retrospect.  In looking to our future, we so often get hung up on the next logical step – the next checkpoint on the linear path we’ve envisioned for ourselves, or society has dictated for us.  Like the woman I met today, we can’t foresee or even conceptualize the left turn, and we become almost obsessively focused on “going straight.”  Unfortunately for us, like the woman I met today, going straight often means hitting a dead end (or Lake Michigan) – either way we’re stuck, or drowning. 

When I got home, I looked at a map and discovered that there are at least seven Starbucks stores in walking distance of Millennium Park.  That woman found her way into three of them – two of them incorrect.  She probably made a half a dozen wrong turns before I helped her to make the right one.  I can’t be certain because I didn’t walk her all the way there, but I’m confident that she made it to her destination – even if she had to ask for more help along the way. 

I’m not sure what they will be because, well, I can’t be sure, but I’m ready for some turns in my life.  I’m confident that, while talking to strangers, I’ll meet some folks who will point me in the right direction.

Until next time…

P.S. Check out this view from the lawn at the Pritzker Pavilion.  It’s posted on all my social media, so you probably already saw it, but seriously.  Gorgeous.  And I didn’t even have to make a left turn to see it…