Contributing Writer: Jane A. Garee
Article by Jane Garee
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
Remember this line at the end of the movie Back to the Future? The DeLorean fires up, Doc puts on his shades and Marty and the gang hightail it out of there, flying a car into the future, only able to guess at what awaits them on the way to their unpaved future.
They didn’t need roads. Airsickness bags, perhaps. But no roads.
What about you? Do you need a road? Does the thought of blazing a new 0
0.0trail leave you giddy with excitement and, it’s okay to admit it, wanting to keep an air sickness bag nearby just in case? Or do your palms sweat at the mere thought of having to walk into uncharted territory, paving your own way, carving out a path, step by grueling step?
I was talking to a fellow entrepreneur friend on the phone the other day, as she was driving. We talked excitedly about what we were going to do and how we were just a teensy bit nervous. A good nervous, the kind that brings that positive stress that makes you get things done, but nervous nonetheless. We discussed our plans, which, not surprisingly to all entrepreneurs, had us simultaneously raking in millions of dollars within a six-month period and wondering who we could call for food donations. Nobody does emotional roller-coastering like an entrepreneur. She was in mid-sentence when she interrupted herself with a loud, “OH.” I asked what was wrong. “I was going to turn down this street but they took the road away,” she replied. In a voice that went up so many octaves the next-door neighbor’s dogs started barking, I screeched, “Did you hear what you just said?! That was positively poetic! Cosmic genius! They took the road away? And you can no longer ‘go down that road’? How fitting is that? Your old route to your final destination no longer exists! You have to get on a new road!” Joining the spirit if not the screeching, she replied, “Well then, you’ll really like this. I’ve been going down that road for years!” My squeal of delight was followed by the sound of hounds now howling but I was too delirious in the perfection of that phrase of parallelism to care.
She’d been going down that road for years. Until they took the road away.
Let’s face it, the last few years have had no shortage of twists and turns, trials and tribulations and enough drama to rival a bad mini-series and the worst Jerry Springer show ever, all rolled into one. “Status quo” hasn’t exactly been the catch phrase of the end of the first decade of the 2000’s. “Hunker down and pray for daylight” would be more like it. It wouldn’t surprise me to know that millions of people are still lying awake at night, muttering to themselves, “I was going to go in this direction, but they took the road away.”
Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
My fellow wondering and weary travelers, let me assure you, the roads are gone and they are never coming back. Don’t listen to people saying, “Things are going to get better”. They’re not. I don’t mean overall conditions won’t improve, personal finances won’t rebound and better days aren’t ahead. That’s simply not true. In fact, the exact opposite will come to pass eventually. Businesses will be created, people may discover when they recover financially that money doesn’t necessarily equal wealth and I think there is quite a bright future ahead of us. What I mean by things won’t get better is that what was, really w-a-s. Past tense. What was is over and what was is not going to get better. The landscape of the business world has changed. Permanently. Things aren’t going to “get better” because the old way of doing things no longer exists. What doesn’t exist can’t be healed.
But what doesn’t exist can be created. Roads that were taken away can be left as fallow ground while we find fresh and empty tracts of land and build new roads. We should all be so lucky to realize and embrace the new opportunities that are ahead of us, that can be created and built by us, that can be big, fat, future successes for us.
This is your time to become your own compass. A compass will always point to true north, regardless of where you are standing, how many times you spin around trying to trick it, or how directionally challenged you are. A compass simply knows which direction is which. This is your new role in your own life. This is how “things are going to get better”. No matter how much spinning you’ve done or wandering around aimlessly, if you get quiet for long enough and listen to your heart, you will know in which direction to go. You will build yourself a new road.
Entrepreneur Magazine, stated in an article this year, “We don’t have to do things the same way. We can take the economy in hand and drive our own destinies. And a movement that has been slowly building in the business world is finally taking hold: We’re seeing the beginnings of the entrepreneurial economy.” To be certain, taking on an entrepreneurial lifestyle and becoming a business owner takes more than guts, although that is required in abundance. The transitioning that is required can be intense and often scary and lonely. I know: I’ve started 3 companies and transitioned differently for each of them. And guess what? All of them were started in this down-turned economy. If I can do it, so can you. I’ll even help you!
I don’t know who originally coined the phrase, “All roads lead to Rome.” Heck, it was probably some bitter person in Greece who was jealous Rome had become the new superpower. But there is super power in that phrase. All your roads will lead to your Rome. Where you were meant to go is where you are headed. As long as you stop trying to turn onto the road that has been taken away.
