Me, as Popover the CLown

Me, as Popover the CLown
I'm Popping Over to say Hi!

Me, as the Ol' Cowhand

Me, as the Ol' Cowhand
Still a clown at heart.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

New GPS

I have been wanting one of these things for some time now. I got one in the form of a laptop program about 4 years ago and we took it on vacation. It almost caused a war.

I was trying to find a place in the car that I could see the clunky laptop screen and still use the wireless mouse on my knee to control the thing. Every time I would move around to see the screen better I would get a look from the driver's seat that would slice through month-old Italian bread. We could not hear the directions with the radio on, so I had earphones wired to the laptop, and looked kind of like an airline pilot. (pardon me, honey, airline CO-Pilot.)

This new thing is about the same size as my Palm Life-Drive PDA. It holds a 2 GB SD card with up to 1000 songs on it, a photo album, and a voice that you can hear about anywhere in the car. It will broadcast through the radio, so I can have the music going from the GPS to the Radio and when it's time for a direction change the music cuts out and the pleasant voice tells my wife where to go.

And she hears and obeys.

When I die, I want to come back as a GPS.

But it got me to thinking. In our life, we have goals. Like us, the GPS has a job to do. We can set the GPS to get us from one place to another one, but the GPS only knows one thing. It knows where it is. The program inside knows where everything is, but that's useless information without knowing where it is now, and that's useless to me unless I have the GPS with me.

Now there are three points that came to mind when I digested these thoughts:

1. If I don't figure out where I want to go, I will never know if I get there.

2. Once I have figured out where I want to be, I need something to tell me where I am in relation to that eventual destination

3. When I get off course and start sight-seeing, I need to be wise enough to check my progress toward my "real" destination occasionally.

What I want success to mean in my life is probably similar-but-different to what you look at as success. Most of us want people near us that we can trust and love, most of us want to be doing things we enjoy at least part of the time, and we generally don't mind a little pain and frustration once in a while if it gets us closer to where we want to be. I guess I have been concentrating on the scenery where I am a little more than I should be doing for a long time. I think I am going to plan a little more diligently toward where I am going.

In my life, my GPS is generally the Bible. It tells me fairly successfully where I am, when I am in he mood to listen to it. The destinations are clearly marked out, and you can take the "fastest route" or the "scenic route". It even tells me when I am off course and how to get back on (when I have the volume turned up loud enough to hear.) It's like having a good honest friend who will tell you when you have a piece of spinnach caught in your teeth.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. What's your GPS, or do you have one?