I’ve never been particularly gifted when it comes to directions or map reading. I probably should have made this clearer when I embarked upon the expedition for my Duke of Edinburgh Award. My poor group, staggering beneath bursting rucksacks, mistakenly gave me the role of leader. I foolishly agreed, hoping that my inner explorer would soon be revealed - a classically optimistic teenage move.
Ever the townie, I stuck to the main roads - avoiding the trickier smaller paths. With nothing but a map and a compass to guide us, it soon emerged that my grasp of a moral compass was rather better than that of the small plastic device now resting upside down on the ordinance survey map. Was it along the corridor and up the stairs, or were you meant to do the stairs first? I can never remember. Four hours later we were back at the stream we’d passed several hours earlier and I realised we were completely and utterly lost. Combine this with the realisation that snack supplies had finally run out and you can picture the scene – morale was low!
A change in approach was needed. Barry, was the school caretaker who had come along to help with the weekend, and more crucially drive the minibus. Breaking the rules completely, and throwing all compasses to the wind – particularly the moral one – I pulled out my mobile and put in an urgent call to Barry. Within minutes, we were all aboard the bus and being delivered to a more reasonable distance from the night’s campsite. (The teachers would never know!)
Though my reliance on Barry is probably not what the Duke of Edinburgh had in mind when he set up the scheme in 1956, (and of course I’m not advocating such behaviour to any aspiring D of E participants… don’t think you could get away with it these days) it offered the help we needed, moving us along our journey and enabling us to complete the weekend (almost) independently.
Changing direction or simply changing approach, can aid us in both our growth and achievement. As the Theologian John Henry Newman once said, "to change is to grow, to change often is to become perfect."
The serenity prayer, which you may already be pretty familiar with, perfectly encapsulates the distinction between when it is best to continue along the same path with the same approach, and when it’s best to (as it were) call Barry...
“Grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”