Mind the gap

“Mind the Gap” it’s a sign known to every New York subway rider. The gap is the abyss between the subway car and the platform; the divide between where you are and where you want to be. It ranges from a half-inch line of murky blackness to a bird's-eye view of frantic street traffic waiting for your unmindful self to slip through the crack and become pulverized by the dangers lurking below. Depending on the train line, the station, and the rates of disrepair, you never truly know what you are gonna get.

Although the warning is meant to keep ankles, property, and people safe, I think its wisdom can apply to many other situations less noticeably fraught with danger. I’ve spent more time than not staring into the gap, knowing where I want to be, what I want my life to look like, but clueless about how to get there, and often despairing over whether I’m ever even meant to get there at all. It’s an uncomfortable space, to say the least. Like a perpetual puberty with all the awkwardness and insecurity of outgrowing everything you’ve known, but still not quite fitting in with the vision you’ve created.

I’m an ambitious person. I’m constantly setting new goals and higher standards on one’s I’ve already accomplished. But with each new ambition, there’s a new gap, a big, uncomfortable, mysterious gap. And then another, and another, and another. And what’s worse is that just outside my train car I can see a platform filled with folks who’ve successfully bridged the enjoying their destination. So how come I’m still stuck on this ride, hanging on with one foot on and one foot dangling into the abyss? It isn’t fair! Am I traveling in circles? Has my stop already passed me by?

Of course not.

If I’m always going to shoot for my dreams, then there’s always going to be a gap. So, I might as well get comfortable with it — well, maybe not comfortable exactly, but curious. It must be there for a reason after all. When I look back at the times in my life when I was desperate for new opportunities, new surroundings, new starts, it’s only with hindsight that I can see how necessary those gaps between my desires and my successes were.

In the long years between knowing I wanted to move out of New Hampshire until finding my home in Sarasota, FL, our family looked at relocating to many, many, many, many different places. But none worked out. It felt like failure, like hopelessness, and at times, like a prison sentence. I might have smacked someone who said this to me at the time, but each place that didn’t work out helped our family to refine our vision, to create a perfect scene of some crazy place that checked every single item we desired off our list. How could a place like that even exist? Well, it does. And by the time I finally found out about Sarasota, it was only two brief months before our house was on the market and the U-Haul was packed up for the drive.

This gap may not be pretty, but it is a place of learning, of growth, skill development, life experience, and knowledge. It’s a space where we define and redefine what we want that destination to actually look like once we arrive. We don’t know all the essential lessons and experiences the gap will provide, but without them, we would travel in circles, the doors perpetually closed, and our destination hazy and unattainable.

Sick of this metaphor yet? Well, I get sick of it too sometimes, sick of waiting, impatient for my desires to arrive. But if they arrived without the necessary preparation, if I skipped the gap completely and just bounced from destination to destination without the journey between, well, I’d kinda miss all the important stuff, right? And what are the chances that I would feel stable on the next platform, ready to embrace my destination, fully prepared for the new adventure waiting for me? Pretty slim.

The gap may not be my favorite place, but I spend more time within it than beyond. After all, once I arrive at the next destination, it’s only a matter of time before the scenery gets dull, and I begin daydreaming of the next place I want to go. So, I’ll mind the gap, get more comfortable with it, curious about what life is delivering to help me arrive where I need to be.

I may hate the gap sometimes, but everything I need is in there. Although it can feel dark and scary, dangerous and depressing, it can also be adventurous, interesting, enlightening, and essential. I’ve learned that no matter where I am, life is always attempting to drive me forward. If I miss a stop, it wasn’t for me. If I arrive at my destination and decide it’s all wrong, there’s another train arriving shortly. If the darkness in the gap seems like it may overtake me, swallow me whole, and spit me out like a chewed-up piece of gum flattened to the subway steps, then I need to take a breath and remind myself that I’m still moving forward, even when it sometimes feels like I’ve been stuck between stations for an eternity. Besides, even that time that I did get stuck between stations during the blackout of 2001, I managed to make it out…eventually.

The better I can mind the gap and pay attention to what it provides for me, the closer I am to my destination. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel overjoyed about the gap, but I think I can get more accepting of its existence. Some days are always going to be better than others. Earlier this week I was able to sit back, relax, and have faith that the driver knows the exact route to take to get me there. Today, I’m ready to rip the driver a new one about the bumpy ride, the delays, and the uncomfortable surroundings. But at least I know that no matter the day, my mood, or how long I’ve been on this ride, I’m not stuck in one place forever. No one is. I know eventually my stop will arrive. It always has. And if I look back, I can say with certainty that I always arrived right on time.