You can only drive to nowhere so long before you end up nowhere

​If I jump in my car, and you ask me where I'm going, and I say, "I don't know, I'm just going for a drive", it's hard telling where I might end up.

I suppose that's okay for a Sunday drive. To just start driving without any real plan where you want to go. If you have no desire to get anywhere in particular why would you need to know where you're going?

After a while, though, that would get tiring. Pointless and aimless. To just drive without ever stopping anywhere you want to stop, without seeing anything or anyone you want to see, without feeling the joy of reaching a destination.

Life would suddenly be just about driving and never arriving.

I think we all need places we want to arrive to avoid living a life that feels pointless. We need something to point at to give us purpose when simply driving around on a Sunday drive is no longer enough.

I can't help but think about this in terms of relationships. A lot of people enter into them because they really enjoy each other's Sunday drive company. But you know, in time, if the sole point of the relationship is to enjoy each other's company, you will quickly cease to enjoy each other's company.

I think it's a question that often gets overlooked on the front end of a relationship.

Where do we want to go?

Absent that question, and absent an answer, the direction is suddenly dictated by the relationship itself. All the emotions and feelings and sentiments and reactions that naturally emit from a relationship - they become the car taking you on a Sunday drive. And if no one has identified up front where they want the car to go, there is no way of really knowing when those emissions have taken you off track.

If you never identify where you want to go, you have no way of knowing you are going the wrong way. Until sadly, you're in a place you can no longer stand to be. You can only take so many Sunday drives to nowhere before you wake up in a place that feels like nowhere.

But when you do know where you want to go in a relationship, you suddenly become each other's biggest source's of guidance and support in getting there. You become each other's biggest cheerleaders when you hit milestones along the way. Relational emotions and struggles become things that just don't feel bad, that leave you with angst, they are things standing in the way of where we're going, and thus, things we'll need to resolve together and not run off and hide from as individuals.

Car troubles on a Sunday drive to nowhere may be inconvenient, but they don't require much sense of urgency to repair them. Because the troubles really aren't standing in the way of getting anywhere.

But car troubles on the way to a place we've agreed we really want to get to, those troubles come with a sense of urgency to repair. Because it's no longer about just feeling more at peace about car troubles, it's about getting the car back on the road to a place we've committed to go.

The pleasures of a Sunday drive are fleeting. The pleasures of getting to a place we've helped each other get, those pleasures never end.

So whether you're talking about a relationship, or just your life in general, if you haven't asked and answered, where do I want to go, you're on a Sunday drive.

You might enjoy the randomness and carefree approach to that drive for a moment, but the joy won't last. We can only drive so long and so far without getting anywhere before the carefree is forever in the rearview mirror.

The good news is, it's never too late to ask, where do I want to go?

The good news is, it's never too late to start driving there.