YOUR LANE? STAY IN IT OR HIT THE GAS ON A HIGHER CALLING

The “stay in your lane” reaction comes from the wrong sources.

As if anyone knows which lane is right for you, but they sure know which one is wrong.

It’s the wrong lane when you take others our of their comfort zone of who they think you are.

But people change. Just not those who like to think they have an element of control.

Control over you? Nice try.

Famous people are always shocking when they do something different.

After Lance Armstrong quit cheating in bike races and trying to ruin the people who called him out, he took up the triathlon and joined Sheryl Crow’s band.

He didn’t stay in his lane, but he made sure others stayed in theirs. Usually their lane was somewhere behind him.

Sure, he’ a famous cheat, but he did support cancer research and treatment. He hasn’t been associated with Livestrong.org since 2012. If you want to switch things up for that lane, it should be a fair ride.

When celebrities take a flyer, should we be so surprised?

Tom Hanks And George Clooney Get In Your Lane

Here’s the cute young guy from Bosom Buddies ready for his career to take off. But instead of following the television path from series to series, then guest appearances on Fantasy Island, Love Boat, and Hollywood Squares, he changes lanes and hits the gas.

However, he takes another path when he hits the big time. Instead of the heroic roles to pump his show biz ego, he’s the dying AIDS patient in Philadelphia, the dying officer in Saving Private Ryan, and the slow-witted star of Forest Gump.

The man jumped lanes from Rom-com royalty to gritty greatness, and we’re all better for it.

Who else has had similar lane changes?

George Clooney could have had a career of playing serious guys with a funny side in television shows for years, and no one would have complained.

But because he had something else in mind, he turned into an industry power player. What else can you call someone who writes, directs, and stars in a movie like The Monuments Men. After his Forest Gump-like O Brother Where Art Thou, and the Ocean’s franchise, he won an Oscar for producing Argo.

Instead of relaxing in the sun and hitting the beach, Tom Hanks and George Clooney heard a higher calling for their talents.

Listen To The Higher Calling, Here’s Mine

Most often we hear a higher calling and ignore it. Why? Because we’re too busy.

Busy with what is a hard question.

However, I heard a call above the static while I was living in Brooklyn, NY. Instead of a voice though, it was a ticking clock.

Where I worked at One Battery Park Plaza, a group of women showed up on the job every day dressed like runway models. Beautiful Italian girls in the latest fashion came in for data entry, and meeting a stock broker.

At the same time, nature was also at work. I noticed them in the lunch room on the seventh floor looking out on Hudson’s Bay, and they noticed me. My buddies also noticed.

They told me to turn off my babe magnet because it would only lead to trouble. Family trouble. Italian family trouble with fathers and brothers. My pals were also Italian, spoke Italian, and sat at the ladies’ table every chance they got.

To sum up, I didn’t move, but one of the women started sitting with me, which I took as a point of pride. Fearful pride. And the others at the table across the room started watching us.

During this time, we talked and smiled and shared our life stories. I knew enough to know I was getting recruited. She wanted a different life than she’d known, and I was from out of town wearing flannel shirts in a button down world.

“I’ve never seen flannel,” she said.

“It’s soft. Feel it,” I said. And she did.

Later on the same day my pal said I was right on schedule to get my throat slit.

He insisted that would be my consequence if my Wall Street beauty reported me to her family. It seemed like a fair trade, but I might have been in a daze.

The Other Higher Calling

Your lane is often defined by where you live. I grew up in Oregon, but lived in Brooklyn. A body of water called Coos Bay surrounded my town of North Bend. The town of Coos Bay shared a city limit line.

During lunch breaks I liked sitting at the floor to ceiling windows in the 7th floor lunch room looking at Hudson Bay and thinking of home. I saw New Jersey across the water and if I squinted real tight, Oregon on the horizon.

At the same time, I could see a green light on the other shore blinking a message.

“Leave soon, or you will live here the rest of your life,” it said.

After one thing led to another, I packed up and headed out. My plan for coming back home was doing something that only happened in Oregon. That was the plan, and it worked out better than a real plan.

I studied Oregon history, did Oregon history in the state museum. Then I applied Oregon history on people new to the state.

I was born on San Fransisco Bay, grew up on Coos Bay, and got inspired by Hudson Bay. You could say I’m a bay guy. Then, when I got married, I married a woman with the last name of Bayes. I was on the right track.

Above all else, my initial goal stood: Do things in Oregon I could only do in Oregon.

Be the best husband, son in law, father, caregiver, and writer.

Some of the goals are ongoing, some concluded. I work every day to reach the high bar.

How about you? Are you staying in your lane?