It Makes All The Difference

My wife and I were discussing our then upcoming road trip. Specifically we were talking about the route, and so necessarily, the overnight stops along the way. She asked what seemed at first a pecular question about one, and then about several, of the stops. It was innocent enough..."What is there that you want to see?" To which I could only reply that I had no idea. She was a little exasperated with me and said something roughly to the effect of "It's not as if people just pick the road they want to drive on...they pick destinations they want to get to and use the roads that get them there."

But, of course, I do...and I had...I had simply picked the roads I wanted to drive. The stops were just towns that lay at about 10 hour intervals on the road. It turned out on the trip that there was something interesting to see in each of them, but none were a destination.

How often do we talk with others never guessing that our frames of reference are so divergent that we must seem obtuse or crazy to the other? How often do we give each other the clues that allow us to bridge the gap? How often do we want to? Can I suppose that it could be more often if we are more interested in the road than the destination?