The Value of Being Diverted

I‘m actually writing this on an airplane, en route to New Zealand. So I hope I’m not tempting the gods by writing about how valuable diversions can be. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking a lot about the costs and benefits of being thrown off course, recently.

I’ve written before about the benefits of traveling unmarked or unexpected terrain, regardless of whether or not it’s your choice to make the side trip. But there are diversions, and then there are diversions.

Right now, for example, I’m choosing to divert myself away from my normal life for a couple of weeks to go back and visit the people I lived with in New Zealand when I was 20 … and finally, three decades later, actually visit the 90-mile beach that inspired me to run away to New Zealand in the first place.

While all that sounds wonderful, I sometimes find it very difficult, in the midst of a busy life, to tear myself away from all that “needs” to be done and pursue a diversion of “unproductive” travel or downtime. But I also know that it’s often when I just walk away, and do something completely unrelated to the work projects piled up on my desk, or even do nothing at all for a significant stretch of time, that my mind clears enough to see creative solutions that can elude me for days, weeks, or months, sitting at my desk. Especially if I remove myself long enough, and far enough, that I have to let go of all the household items and family responsibilities that normally scream for my attention. There is a reason Anne Morrow Lindbergh used to retreat to a cottage on a beach for 5 weeks by herself,  every year, just to think and write. She simply couldn’t get the mind space for creative insight in the midst of raising five children.

If that’s true, it’s because creativity is a non-linear and often unpredictable process that requires space and time to ripen. As Timothy Egan wrote in a recent New York Times column called “Creativity vs. Quants” creativity requires “messiness, magic serendipity and insanity,” as well as a mind that has been “taught…to misbehave.” All that requires a bit of space and time–not just because it’s a crazy, messy kind of process, but also because having more room makes your mind more receptive to hearing, seeing, and recognizing creative ideas, answers, or ways of looking at things when those notions cross your path. What’s more, consciously diverting out of your normal routine increases the possibility that you will encounter new inputs, some of which may inspire the “aha!” answer you’d been looking for.

Of course, all that may also inspire a lot of creative ideas that don’t work, which is why pursuing a creative career is so scary. (And why so many companies are reluctant to really embrace it.) The sad but true fact of the matter is, creativity is an exploratory, unpredictable, trial-and-error process. Which means even if you’re brilliant one day, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to come up with another amazing new idea, phrase, product or design the next. However … recognizing that creativity often strikes best when you’re not consciously striving for it, or are diverted off your normal routine, can help you find ways of increasing the odds of running into it more often.

But there’s another kind of “being diverted” that is far less transient. I was reading a column by David Brooks the other day, in which he was advising employers to steer away from hiring “perfectionists,” or people with the cookie-cutter perfect resume of top grades, conventional positions, all the “right” volunteer efforts, and seemingly perfect life histories. Instead, he said, employers should seek to hire “dualists,” which he defined as people with some level of conventional success, but who had also done something that made no sense from a career or social status perspective. People, in other words, who had allowed themselves to be diverted, whether it was to follow a passion, explore something new, or take care of a family obligation.

Brooks also advised employers to “reward those who have come by way of sorrow …who had learned the lessons that only suffering teaches.” People, in other words, who had experienced being diverted in very difficult ways; in ways that almost assuredly changed them, and nurtured the development of “deeper sensibilities,” including “other-centeredness” and “discerning what’s right in the absence of external affirmation.”

His point, which I agree with, is that difficult diversions from the conventional or most self-serving “success” path, whether sought or imposed, tend to be highly educational. Not necessarily comfortable, you understand. And–as with all true adventures–you may not end up, when all is said and done, where you expected.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because over the course of the past three and a half years, I’ve been diverted quite significantly from the road I was on before. For starters, I got married and took on a family. That alone diverts you from whatever path you were on, because families take time and energy. But I did all that while living in and managing a house renovation/construction project for my elderly parents … who ended up getting very sick and moving in with us, so I ended up caretaking them while managing the clearing out, renovation, and sale of the home they’d lived in for over 50 years. I had a stepchild hit by a car and partially disabled for life. I had a husband who required complete knee replacement surgery. We moved and shuffled our belongings 6 times in three years.

It was every bit as hard as it sounds, and a whole lot more.

Now, with my parents somewhat stabilized and living with help on their own, and the two boys in college, and with just my husband and myself at home, most of the time, I am finally at a point where I can merge back onto the mainstream. But here’s the thing: I am not the same person I was, four years ago.

I’ve learned a lot, from having my path diverted so dramatically. I’ve learned a lot about parenting, to be sure, and about how difficult it is to navigate hospitals and the health care system, especially for the elderly. I’ve learned that I never, ever want to be a contractor, even though I now possess the knowledge and experience to do the job. I’ve gained a new appreciation for people who perform the simple miracle of following through and doing exactly what they promised, without nagging or conflict or drama. In point of fact, I find myself with almost zero tolerance for drama, these days. I’ve learned that humans are, indeed, stronger than we think we are. We can take on or endure almost anything, if the people we love require it. We just can’t do it without cost–a cost that perhaps only those who have also paid it will ever fully understand.

I also find that different things matter to me, now. After being immersed in such huge life and death issues for such a stretch, I find myself completely uninterested in whatever the newest hot, “trending” or “buzz” item is, or most of the trivia posted on the internet. I find myself less impressed with highly successful people, and empathizing far more with people just struggling to hold it all together. I’m also far pickier about whose opinions I’m willing to take the time to listen to. As a friend of mine who’s also gone through a really rough patch with family crises put it, “I now have the opposite of a bucket list. I have a list of things I am simply no longer willing to do, put up with, or be around.”

Granted, those lessons aren’t as bright and shiny as the adrenaline-charged rewards of a successful Alpine summit attempt. But not all adventure is the stuff of youth and glory. The value of the adventure that follows being diverted is that, if nothing else, it changes your perspective. Sometimes temporarily, and sometimes permanently. But changing your perspective tends to expand your understanding of the world. It can also help clarify your thinking–which is why it can jump-start creativity and help you make better decisions, as well as develop “deeper sensibilities,” as David Brooks put it.

Sometimes, of course, that change in perspective necessitates some significant recalibration, in terms of goals and activities. But while that can be difficult, because it may mean letting go of paths, beliefs, relationships or dreams you’d held onto for a long time, it can also be incredibly liberating. Knowing what you have no interest in doing anymore is just as valuable as the giddy sense of knowing what your heart’s truest passion is.

Life is supposed to change us. If it doesn’t, it means you never got out of the grandstands and down into the mud and action and mess of living. The challenge is to figure out how to continue navigating a meaningful, joyful, and happy course forward even as the world around us changes, and we, ourselves, are diverted and changed.

And as I think about it–and finally find the time, inspiration and energy to write a little bit about it here, en route to New Zealand– the entertaining irony of it strikes me. It would seem that even in our efforts to figure the best way forward from a diversion off course … a little diversion can be a valuable and inspirational thing.