This morning I was all snarled up in traffic on McCarter Highway. For two miles we crawled at a snail’s pace. But the sun was shining and the sky was clear, and Deee-Lite was on the radio singing ‘What Is Love?’ so I was bopping in my seat.

When I finally got to my turn-off thirty minutes later, I made a left and found myself immediately stuck in another jam. Cars to my left and right, I was behind a bus. The bus was behind a garbage truck. The garbage truck was stopping every ten feet so the guys could dump the garbage cans.

After two or three blocks, I saw a small opening on the left. I hesitated for a moment. I checked my side view mirror and decided I could make it. I quickly passed the bus and the garbage truck.

I broke away! Just me. No one else in front of me. A moment of freedom.

There is no better feeling than breaking away from the pack, especially when the pack is holding you back, snarling you up, keeping you from going wherever you could be going. There is no better feeling than being in charge of your own pace and your own direction.

It’s the same with our habits, our thoughts, our hearts. We get caught up. Stuck in a jam. We slog along at the same slow pace, day in and day out, dealing with obstacle after obstacle. We get stuck thinking we have to move in a certain direction, at a certain speed, because everyone else is moving that way. We get jammed up with thoughts that we have to act a certain way, look a certain way, live a certain way, love a certain way, just because that’s the way we’ve acted, looked, lived or loved up until now.

Our heads get jammed up with thoughts. Our hearts get jammed up with fear. We find it easier to keep on living and loving in a certain way because it’s safer than opening up and living fully, loving completely.

But the truth is we have the power to break away at any time. There’s always an opening, we just can’t always see it.

Once we see the opening, once we know it’s there, then we can begin to change course. We can break free.

Check your side view mirror. Is it time to break away?

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Deee-Lite, What Is Love?