Meaningful Returns

Many road lines in Raleigh are being repainted these days. More accurately, they are being moved. And why? To make space for bicycle lanes.

What’s fascinating to me about this is that these are not roads that were widened to make room for bicycle lanes. The width of the roads themselves has remained the same. Yet someone, or a group of someones, understood that what was needed was not necessarily more room, but simply more sensible boundaries.

There was always room.

Sometimes we say, “I don’t have enough,” and then finish the sentence with a noun like “Time,” or “Money.” And perhaps those sentences are true for some of us, some of the time. But maybe what’s really needed is not more of the thing so much as it is more appropriate boundaries around that thing. Not just boundaries for their own sake, but boundaries that serve to make space for us to pursue with passion the things that we were made to do.

So before you start repainting the lines in your own life, it’s worth giving some thought to what your own life is for? What is it that you bring to this world that no one else on the planet does? It’s there. Go find it.