Lost between here and there
WE WOULD LIKE to be able to put it down to jet lag, but we were pretty well adjusted, having already been on Pacific time for several days by the time we got to Tucson. So Marcia and I will have to blame it on a senior moment.
With a couple of hours to kill before we headed to the airport, we made a list of the things we wanted to see around town. It included the hotel where the infamous gangster John Dillinger hung out before he was apprehended back in the 1930s, and the folkloric Wishing Shrine.
Pulled over in a parking zone near the downtown, we Googled our first planned destination, the shrine, and were delighted to find that we were very close. The little red dot blinking on the smartphone map was right nearby our current spot. In fact, on closer inspection, it was exactly where we were. It was showing our location, not the destination. Duh.
Figuring that we couldn’t be far away, we set out on foot in 106-degree heat. With no sign of the shrine after a short walk, it was a relief for me to duck into a big red brick building to take advantage of the air conditioning while I asked the nice man behind the lobby for directions.
Joining Marcia back out on the street, I triumphantly waved in my right hand the hand-written directions I’d been given. What was in my left, she wanted to know? Oh, that was a brochure I’d picked up off the counter as I was leaving—a brochure that, when I looked at it more closely, explained how John Dillinger had stayed in that very building. Yes, this was the second of our destinations.
Twice within a few minutes, it was apparent, we had missed it. So intent on getting there, we failed to realize where we were already. And isn’t life just like that, sometimes? We’re so busy looking ahead, looking for more, that we don’t recognize where our feet have already brought us. Maybe we need to spend more time looking down at where we are rather than down the road to where we think we need to be.
Photo credit: Vincent Albanese via Foter.com/CC BY
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