I was reminiscing about a time when my sister and I needed to get a rental car in London to take us to Penzance, three hundred miles due west in the area of Cornwal, England. Penzance is located at the very western tip of the Cornwall Peninsula and accessible by the M4/5 highways. We were excited to be viewing an open- air festival bringing artists, musicians and writers of the highest caliber. I had booked us into a great B&B for the weekend. So, off we went to the rental car agency. Unfortunately, neither of us knew how to drive a stick shift. At the time that was the only type of car available. The woman at the rental place asked us whether we knew how to drive a car with a manual transmission. After winking at each other conspiratorially, we simultaneously answered, “yes, of course.” We figured we could learn how to drive one of ‘those’ cars in a nearby parking lot before venturing on the highway. Pretty brash decision.

It wasn’t a great plan. We never got to Penzance that day! We decided that one of us would shift (me) while the other would steer to make it less stressful on the driver. We kept the car in first gear. What was particularly debilitating is that no sooner were we on the A4 than the engine began to overheat, smoke, and finally seize up. We should have realized something was amiss when we couldn’t get the car to go beyond 30 miles an hour and other cars were honking angrily at us as if something was very wrong with us. Something was very wrong, and we had to pull off the highway and wait for help to come.

This little anecdote leads me to the thought that when we have obstacles in our lives, sometimes the more prudent choice would be to stop and access the situation while considering a path of least resistance. In retrospect, this would have been to take the train even if we would have gotten there a few hours after our planned drive. When we try to push or resist, odds are things never work out the way we want them to. The art of alignment takes a higher vibration and when we resist, it’s simple physics, we are running on a low vibration.

by having this experience, it was clear to me that we had some unresolved issues to work on; like trying to mandate outcomes when there are better choices. There are lessons to be learned from many of our experiences. Driving a car we had no right to fool with led to increased tension and frustration mounting at each mile. It taught me a good lesson about the path of least resistance. Hindsight can be a wonderful visual and emotional tool if you are not too stubborn to take advantage of it. Why do we have to wait until things (whether literal or figurative) break down and an easy choice isn’t even an option anymore?