You Can’t Tell a Detour From a Dead End While You’re In It

We celebrated Labor Day weekend here in the U.S. with performances of the 2016 film La La Land.

I was many years out of school when the movie came out, but within seconds of the opening scene, I was transported back to being a student in Los Angeles—practicing under the oak tree on the music campus, spending time at the pier in Santa Monica, and imagining the person I might someday become.

Back then, Los Angeles felt like a dreamland. My future seemed full of promise and possibility.

Watching the film again this time, though, I wasn't just nostalgic. I found myself looking back at the life I imagined then next to the life I'm actually living now.

And I realized something I wish I'd known in those years:

It can be incredibly hard to see your own life while you're living it.

You can't see the whole path yet

In La La Land, Sebastian and Mia both want to build lives around what they love, but they take very different paths.

Sebastian takes a job playing music he doesn't like because it gives him the money and opportunity to eventually build the jazz club he dreams about.

Mia experiences rejection after rejection. Her one-woman show barely draws an audience, and for a moment, it looks like proof that she should give up.

But from further down the road, we can see what they couldn't see at the time.

Sebastian's hated job becomes a bridge.

Mia's disappointing show puts her in the room with someone who recognizes her talent and opens a new door.

That's one of the things school doesn't really prepare you for:

There is no way to know whether something is a detour or a dead end while you're standing in it.

The wedding gig you're tired of playing.

The teaching schedule that eats into your practice time.

The audition that doesn't go your way.

The opportunity that doesn't look anything like the opportunity you thought you were waiting for.

From inside those moments, they can feel like failures or wasted time.

But sometimes they're redirections. Sometimes they're bridges. Sometimes they're doors.

And you usually don't know which one until much later.

The dream isn't a fixed picture

I didn't know, all those years ago, that the life that unfolded for me wouldn't look anything like the one I was picturing.

And I didn't know that this wouldn't mean I'd failed.

We often treat "the dream" like a fixed photograph waiting somewhere ahead of us. We imagine that success means eventually arriving at exactly the picture we had in our heads.

But nobody's path looks like a still image.

Not Sebastian's.

Not Mia's.

Not mine.

Not yours.

Success can show up sideways—in the gig you didn't want, the masterclass you almost skipped, the conversation you didn't think would matter, or the performance that seemed like a failure at the time.

Sometimes it can feel like you're standing still for years.

Then you look back and realize you were moving the whole time.

The path is the path

Maybe that's the part I wish I'd understood sooner.

The path is the path.

Wherever you go, there you are, doing the sometimes unglamorous work of being yourself inside that particular moment.

The present is the only place any of this actually happens. The meaning of the road often reveals itself later.

So if you're somewhere right now that doesn't look like the dream you imagined, don't be so quick to decide that you've taken a wrong turn.

You may be on a detour.

You may be building a bridge.

You may be standing in front of a door you don't recognize yet.

You won't necessarily know which one.

And that's okay.

Cheering for you,
Ixi

P.S. At the end of La La Land, Mia and Sebastian find themselves in the same room again. There's a moment between them—a look, a smile, a small nod—that seems to hold gratitude rather than regret.

Recognition of the paths they each helped the other find.

Sometimes, maybe that's what looking back is for.

P.S. What's a thing in your life right now that feels like standing still, but might actually be the bridge? Conversely, what's something you can give a nod to, as you look back on where you've come? Reply and tell me, I read every one!

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P.P.S. If taking stock like this is calling to you, that's the whole spirit behind this season's Harvest collection, small group writing and career practices built around exactly this kind of looking back before we move into what's next. It's live now, here.