If we have to detour, we detour
It showed up in a box I was about to seal with packing tape.
A plastic detour sign, slightly bent, that I'd kept as a souvenir from a night out with friends years back. I was moving.
I'd decided my days as a La Plata resident were over: partly because I was losing too much time commuting to the office in Buenos Aires every day, partly because I was sure that on the other side there was an endless stock of opportunities of every kind.
With my whole life neat and organized, breaking that mold turned everything into a total mess. It was like jumping into one of those ball pits at trampoline parks: great to jump in, but getting out takes serious effort. Great too, because you choose to lose control, knowing you'll get out eventually. You know what you want, and in my case what I wanted was to get back the time I was losing on the commute. If changing course along the way gets you there, so be it.
It had happened to me several times before the move. Opportunities that never quite convinced me, searches for new directions, and one very concrete premise: if we have to detour, we detour.
Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place.
A while back, I remember a dinner table conversation where someone spoke proudly about a person who'd spent twenty five years at the same company: "Now that's stability," they said, as if the word alone was enough. Nobody asked if that person was happy in there. The question didn't even come up.
That's the mold that feels most worn out to me: the idea that if something lasts forever, it's better. Love, work, the dining table. Everything used to feel amazing if it came with decades of history.
And yet the world changed speed. What lasts is no longer the same as what's worth it. The furniture you used to buy to last a hundred years, you replace today the moment you stop liking it. Work is no different, even if it's harder to admit: staying because you've already put in the time isn't the same as staying because it's good for you.
The question isn't how much you can put up with. It's whether you like what you do in there.
In my case, it wasn't a job I was letting go of. It was the whole city. What I was doing was working up the nerve to let go of the rope I was already holding, to grab the one I wanted.
No news of the sign. I tossed it a while ago, but I saw it again in this old photo and remembered something: that arrow was never pointing outward. It was pointing at me.
J.
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