Get Off The Road To Abilene!

Road to Abilene; photo by Matthew High

The Road to Abilene is a business parable addressing the dangers of groupthink. It goes something like this:

There is a group of folks sitting around a porch on a very hot summer's day and one fella says to the group: hey, we could always take a ride to Abilene and grab dinner. The woman to his left says: yes, that's a fine idea. And they all decide to get in the car and drive to Abilene. It's a miserable trip. No airconditioning, the food was bad, they're all crabby. On the way home someone finally acknowledges what a lousy trip it was: why did we even go when we could have just enjoyed a day sitting around sipping iced-tea and playing dominoes? After a round-robin of blame-placing they come to the original guy who suggested it and decide to blame him. Embarrassed he says: I thought you were all bored so I just threw the idea out there... you were the ones who decided to come along for the ride. 

When a friend recently shared this story it occurred to me this is more then just a business analogy, it's the way many of us live our lives. How many times have we ended up at a job, romantically involved, or in some way living out a situation we not only didn't want but can't exactly remember how we got there?

It's sad but true that I have more than a handful of acquaintances who've told me they knew the day of their wedding they didn't really want to get married but did it anyway. Why? Because they had already started down that path. Many have ended up with a house, at a job, in a town, with more kids then they wanted just because it was the next thing to do.

When was the last time we asked ourselves if we are on the road we want to be on? In the company of the people we really want to be traveling our lives with? 

Now is the time to stop and get our bearings back and make sure even if we're merely inching along that we are at least on the path we truly want to venture down. If not, let's turn it around, take a different road, switch vehicles or passengers, or something. We are the drivers of our lives... for gosh sakes let's get the hell off the road to Abilene!