I worked in a small town in North Alabama for five years. Often in the mornings I would stop at a convenience store for coffee. A mother ran the store during the day, and her daughter ran it in the evenings. The daughter had recently graduated from high school, and taken the job which appeared to be her career. One morning she asked me where I worked. I told her that I worked at one of the larger employers in town.
She said that she knew some people who worked there. It was a small town. I asked her if she knew where it was. She said that she did not. I told her that it was easily findable, in that it was right across the road from the nuclear power plant. “You know, the one with the two huge towers?” Still no clue. “Okay, when you leave the store to go home, which way do you turn?” “I turn right.”
“Well, here’s what I want you to do. When you leave today, turn left. It will only take you ten minutes to get there.” She said that she might do that someday, because she had always wanted to see the big towers.
This was a full-blown nuclear power plant with two huge cooling towers that you could not miss if you were driving down the highway. It cost the TVA over $4 billion to build the plant, but the decision was made to never use it. It was the most imposing landmark in the area, and only ten minutes from the store clerk’s high school, but she had never seen it. She had always wanted to, but just had not gotten around to it.
Obviously, that discussion twenty-five years ago made an impression on me. What kind of a provincial lifestyle could cause one to lose all imagination and one’s sense of discovery? My answer: The same kind of life that keeps most of us making the same “right turn” everyday. It is the easy route. It is the familiar route. It is the route that gives us a sense of safety, while robbing us of the potential discovery of the “left turn.”
Perhaps my favorite movie scene is from LA LA Land, when Emma Stone auditions for a role. They ask her to tell a story. She starts with a story that becomes a song about her aunt who lived in Paris for awhile, and “tumbled into the Seine.” The song crescendos into the following chorus.
So bring on the rebels
The ripples from pebbles
The painters, and poets, and plays
And here’s to the fools who dream
Crazy as they may seem
Here’s to the hearts that break
Here’s to the mess we make
Go out and make a mess. Turn left.
Turn Left 