Attention: Your Life Depends On It

Greetings!

I am writing this while sitting in the woods in the middle of nowhere somewhere north of Wythville, Virginia.

This particular stop was prompted after we nearly wrecked on I-81 north.

The reason we almost wrecked was entirely my fault.

I looked at the phone while driving.

The reason I looked doesn't really matter. I make all sorts of justifications for looking at the phone while driving, even though I know that I shouldn't.

I tell myself a story that it doesn't count for all sorts of reasons.

It's okay to look because I'm only picking up a phone call.

I'm just checking the map.

I just want to know where the next rest area is.

I'm on the interstate and there aren't many cars.

This is an important call.

I'll only look for a second.

I have to imagine I'm not alone in rationalizing phone use with thoughts like this, considering how often I see other people using their phones while driving.

One of the reasons that these thoughts are so convincing is the fact that they are usually right.

999 times out of 1000, nothing bad is going to happen if you glance down to skip a song on Spotify.

It's that other time that gets you.

It's the time that you are doing 80 coming over a hill on a wide open interstate that has an unexpected back up when you plow into the back of the car in front of you, all because you weren't directing your attention where it belongs.

This was nearly the story of my day. Lucky for me, my wife was paying attention and let out a scream that communicated very effectively that I needed to stop the car immediately.

Scary, isn't it?

The universe must have been looking out for me today. Instead of plowing into the back of that car, I jumped off a random exit to recollect and stumbled on a sign to a national forest campground.

On a whim, I followed the sign and found a scenic drive that weaves through the Virignia mountains with stops for fossil sites, fire towers, and hiking trails that weave through old forests along pleasant streams.

I'm spending my afternoon having leaf races with my kids, lost in the woods.

I couldn't be happier or more grateful to be alive than I am right now.

Here's to directing our attention to the right places.

Life is good.