Tradition (as Protection)

Tradition, when engaged healthfully, is like a wide shoulder on the side of a country road: it gives plenty of warning before we drive off the edge and into a ditch. It’s not side rails that tightly hug the edge of what’s safe. It’s not a wall or barricade that disallows any latitude, forcing us to stay on the straight and narrow. Tradition offers guidance.

The terrain ahead, to be certain, is not the terrain we’ve seen before. Instead of using tradition to guide and inform and assist in navigating the new terrain it’s more often used to shelter and protect us.

Why? Because new terrain requires new skills, new tools, maybe new tires, or a whole new vehicle. New terrain evokes feelings of unpreparedness, incompetence, instability.

But, those feelings always precede discovering new methods of transportation.

Don’t let tradition protect you from the feelings that you need to forge new ways to get from here to there.