Kathy says if I get a smartphone I’ll stop being late for meetings. Owning a smartphone would give me the ability to monitor traffic in real time. I would see upcoming blockages and obstacles and bypass them to minimize delay.

I pulled up Waze on Kathy’s iPhone screen as I sat in her passenger seat and I felt like God.

Waze allows us to monitor our precise location on this planet. We monitor our heart rate, our caloric expenditure, the weather, the markets, the friends we have on Facebook. To monitor is to manage. We monitor to feel like we’re in control.

Imagine if we could view the real-time roadmap of our lives in the same way. If we could see the location of setbacks and hurdles and roadblocks. We would navigate around them, of course, because no one ever intentionally steers headfirst into adversity. Gifted with clairvoyance, we would all put ourselves on the FasTrak to wealth and power.

Receiving real-time traffic conditions on a phone makes sense, because people want to spend as little time as possible in their cars. People who dislike driving feel like they need to be somewhere. People who dislike their lives see only the roadblocks. Why are we in such a hurry to get to the nowhere that we need to be?

Zen rock gardens are built to represent flowing water; to me they look like paved roads, or maybe the roads look like water. The obstacles are at once both in the way and exactly where they need to be. There are no detours if there is no destination. It begins with relinquishing control.

Be water, my friend [1].

1.