We planned the perfect trip. The road had other ideas. Here is what I learned.

The planning on paper came together with ease.

We had arrival times, ideas of pit stops, and a clear sense of how we perceived it would all play out. Our minds had crafted the ultimate comfort line of control. We had an idea of exactly what we needed. The overnight bag was packed for a quick rest in the stay over, as we nestled toward a city hotel in the beautiful Innsbruck, Austria.

Control is often exactly what humans strive for. It is never truly about anything else, but the ability to hold domain over something that makes us feel safe within ourselves.

But in reality, that almost never works out that way.

We were travelling with dogs and children. Children too young to understand the distance we were travelling, and at the same time expecting them to bear with us is almost unrealistic. As for the dogs, well, they do not speak English, so we cannot really tell them what we have planned. One is an eight-year-old rescue, a poodle-shitzu cross, basically acting as if she belongs to a Queen of sorts. The other a pure bred doodle who is two years old and full of curious life.

They too were family.

The road works throughout most of the Autobahn in Germany had indications showing it will likely remain under part construction until 2027. Rows and rows of cars piled up in some areas, pushing our destination times out by forty-five minutes to two hours at a time. Evening arrival turned into past midnight. By the time we came to the hotel it was almost 3AM. The receptionist had started running the night audit process, causing our check-in to be delayed by another fifty minutes.

We were now four-plus hours outside of our comfort line of timing.

The travellers were tired, restless, and agitated. If you believe in Murphy's Law, you would be hailing his company by now.

But something I had learned in observing so many people around me, as with my own life, was a simple thought.

If we had to arrive at every destination on cue, we would likely bore ourselves overtime.

Reframing human existence is about understanding our agility. It is the very thing that reminds us of all our strengths. Too often when things become too easy, too well planned, too available, and at our fingertips, we get up to no good. We lose visibility for our gratitude. Or the aptitude we need to have a deepened appreciation for things.

As I allowed the road to keep forming before me in that van, I thought of the ancient humans. The ones that would have walked these terrains without comfort or convenience. They must have been something to behold. If we stripped away all that science, technology, and the progress of the revolutions have provided us, likely more than half of humanity would not know how to cope or survive.

These ideas kept taking shape as we drove.

They took me to a point where I was thinking about the constructs of balance. How we would never find enjoyment in things unless we knew what it tasted like not to have it. Of course this does not mean we need to experience it that way all the time. But it does allow you to remove the element of comfort and replace it with something richer.

A teaching on surprise, patience, and adjustability.

These are human virtues that shape our core, allowing us to remain balanced and non-linear in thinking. Small pleasures we have in a consumer-driven world, gearing for automation and ease, quickly become a double-edged sword. Somehow we needed a simple refactoring of equilibrium, pushing us to remain merely and painstakingly human.

Despite the long travel, none of us seemed to complain too much.

We were waiting for the road to bring to us its own rest. As if a holiday has a sort of healing property to it. Each of us entertained ourselves in the van, sometimes singing along to songs together, and other times drifting in our own thoughts and preferences.

I looked out at the vast landscapes of Germany and wondered why anyone would have wanted to conquer any other land at all. They have so much of it, and the views are breathtaking. But oftentimes the land is never the fight really, because it simply becomes an acceptable definition for a power struggle between men and themselves.

I looked away from that thought. Instead I allowed myself to be entertained by other concepts of power. Hard rock and granite, forcefully pushed from the core of the earth into viewable gigantic landscapes called mountains. We made our way through the Brenner Pass, one of the lowest and most important Alpine crossings, sitting cosily at 4,511 feet, nestled between the silent giants.

It often brought my mind back to Kilimanjaro.

When you sit there realising you just used a car to climb 4,511 feet, you hear the dropping of gears and the careful shifts as you move between the witnesses of the heavens. You are reminded of what it takes.

I often feel like I am doing the same action. Driving, and driving, and driving, and feeling like I never make progress.

Always driving. But if you look closely, it is always a new road.

The version of you in the bus, alongside the travellers, is always different. So progress is more of a compilation of the journey itself, and what you are willing to recall from it.

That is what the road keeps teaching me.

Not to arrive on time. Not to control the outcome. But to remain curious enough, agile enough, and human enough to find the meaning in what the delay was actually offering.

The road does not care about your arrival time.

It only cares whether you were paying attention.

— V