Friday Forward - The Long Way (#536)

The experiences I look back on most fondly are almost never the ones I optimized for convenience

Last Friday, you heard from my daughter Chloe who just graduated college this week. While the week leading up to commencement was full of the typical pomp and circumstance, one of my favorite parts came after the cap and gown were packed away.

After graduation, Chloe and I drove her car home together from Atlanta to Boston, packed to the brim with all her belongings. Seventeen hours of driving in two days, with almost 12 of those hours coming on the first day.

Generally, a 17-hour road trip would be near the top of my list of things to avoid. I am impatient, I don’t sit still well for sustained periods of time, and I despise traffic. Shipping the car would have been faster, easier, and probably cheaper after accounting for wear and tear on the car.

But so many friends have told me over the years that they treasured the long drive to or from school with their kids. My wife made the trip twice with Chloe when my schedule did not allow it, and I was a little bit jealous. I did not want to miss the last trip with my daughter, so I blocked the days in my calendar months ago.

I was driven partly by a small voice in my head that I’ve written about in my most popular post to date, 18 Summers. That post included a reference to Tim Urban’s now-famous chart visualizing how much in-person time parents have left with their kids. The chart reveals a sobering truth: by the time a kid graduates high school, they have already spent roughly 93 percent of the in-person time they will ever have with their parents. Even more of that time is gone by the end of college.

Through that lens, the math gets easier. The efficient choice was to ship the car, fly home, and save a day (or two). The right choice was to drive.

So, we drove. We listened to music, worked through a few podcasts, and took turns napping. We spent the night at a cousin’s house we had not visited for years and had some quality time with them. We also sat silently for long stretches just taking in the scenery, which is its own kind of quality time.

Nothing about the drive was remarkable on the surface. We did not have a breakthrough conversation, imparted life wisdom or a Hallmark moment. And yet it is a memory I will cherish, and I hope Chloe will too.

The experiences in my life that I look back on with the most appreciation are rarely the ones I optimized for convenience. They are almost always the ones that required a little more time or effort, or that had some sort of complication in the moment. Days that, at the time, I would have happily traded for an easier alternative if someone had offered.

Comfort and meaning, it turns out, are often inversely correlated.

The drive also reminded me of something useful about expectations. A half hour drive stretched to two hours by traffic can feel endless. But once you have mentally committed to 17 hours, two hours flies by like nothing. The same is true of the harder things in life. When you stretch to do something you did not think you could do, your baseline shifts. Things that used to feel hard start to feel manageable. Resilience, in that sense, comes from recalibrating what we think is normal.

The next time you find yourself reaching for the efficient choice, the one that lets you skip the work, it is worth asking if there is an experience you may be missing. Sometimes the inefficient option is the one with the memory or story in it. And the older I get, the more I find myself wanting that option.

The inconvenient thing, depending on the context, can create the most meaning. Remember that the quantity of hours you invest is less important than the quality of that time.

Quote of the Week

“The longest way round is the shortest way home.” – James Joyce

Have a great weekend!

-Bob

robertglazer.com

PS - Many of you replied to Chloe’s guest post last week curious about the 12 Life Lessons letter she referenced me giving to her when she arrived at college. I’m not ready to share that with the full internet, but to start I put it on Substack for Premium Subscribers to keep the reach a bit closer. You can find it below: