Some days she greets me with an impeccable English accent as we prepare to pass the miles on the highway together. Other days she speaks to me in the most fluent Spanish, teaching me words like “izquierda” (left) and “rotonda” (roundabout). But no matter the preset language or accent, I listen to and trust her on a daily basis. Without a doubt she will get me where I need to be.
This scares me.

It scares me that I trust a GPS hooked to my dashboard more than I trust the navigation system planted in my very own heart. I listen more to an automated voice than I do the one that lives in my soul, the one that has tried every creative means to get me to acknowledge it.

It saddens me that I have to wonder what life might be like if we all followed our hearts: the GPS embedded in each of us, the destination already preset by our largest and most glorious of dreams. Life would be so much easier if we knew, despite the traffic we would encounter or the road closings ahead, we should still proceed and trust that eventually we will reach our destination. If we always inserted this much faith we would never have to worry about becoming lost… We would simply know that every wrong turn would still bring us back on track, even if the route is unfamiliar to us.

I don’t believe for a second that the destinations we long for, the ones we set out every single day to summon into reality, are not there for a reason. I believe with every inch of my being that our passions, our dreams, our wishes, exist in our souls for a reason. If there was no reason behind it then you and I could have the very same dreams and ideas on how to reach those dreams and it would not matter. It is the mere fact that certain words make your face light up and not mine, particular dialogues fuel me in an incomprehensible manner but these conversations don’t spark the same fire in you. We were never meant to have the exact same destination, but rather to branch out and trust the navigation system deep within us that is customized to our souls.

You might how I know this to be true… One of my best friends won the college election tonight, giving her the title of 2010-2011 Student Government Association President, a dream that she has taken extra care of for the last 15 years. I have watched her for the past month worry and wait for the results, campaigning non stop, taking the time to extend a hand to nearly every student at this college and still managing to be a support to me at the end of every day. I sat proudly across from her tonight as she told her Papa the good news, the news she has long to hear for three years. And I saw it. That untouchable moment of happiness, belonging to only her; a confirmation that we are each meant to believe in the dreams we take so much time to plant in our beings for we are the ones who can love them best.

And she might reveal the same secret that I am about to uncover this very moment; one that I pray is not so secretive at all. We Need To Follow. Even when we believe that we are being led in the wrong direction. We Need To Follow. Even as we are left in bumper to bumper traffic in the form of those who tell us that are dreams are not “practical” or “realistic.” We Need To Follow. Even when we wind down back roads that we are unfamiliar with or take turns that we swear will not lead us to our destinations. We Follow. We Trust. We Listen. And we watch as the GPS installed on the dashboard of our hearts takes us closer to the dreams that shape our horizons. The Miles Becoming Fewer. Our destinations getting closer.

Perhaps we don’t reach the destination today or next month or even next year. But I think we should trust the fact that we have cared so much to dream our dreams into existence that life may validate our requests enough to program a route into our hearts, calculate the distance and began to move us closer to an endpoint. Maybe not always the route we write out ourselves or the roads we would choose to take, but life finds perfect timing without ever needing to be on our time.

May we follow our hearts and trust in the routes we are given. Here is to our destinations.