Life’s Mazes

Last week, my family and I took on a corn maze adventure. (You can see the maze here: http://www.dairyview.com/). The corn maze had three paths: easy, medium, hard. We took the mid-level challenge. Our goal: navigate through the maze, find each of the six numbered stops (numbers 7-11), punch our game card at each stop, then get out and have ice cream!

We got lost. Repeatedly. Or, we found the same numbered stop–#11–again and again. We’d think we found the way to stop number 12, we’d see the post in the distance, one of the kids would run to it, jumping with excitement. Then the kid–11-year-old Sam or five-year-old Elly–would scream: “Oh no! It’s number eleven. Again!” It was funny the first five times it happened. Then we got frustrated. My son said, “We’ll never finish.” As we tried again, my daughter moaned, “We’re going around in circles.” No kidding!

We planned the maze trip as a play-outing on our vacation–along the lines of going to the park or playing miniature golf. And though frustrating, it was fun. We laughed a lot. But we also learned something about ourselves and each other and the way we function as a family. My husband was in it for the steps: he didn’t care how long we were in the maze as long as he accumulated pedometer miles. My son was obsessed with finishing: getting the cards punched and getting to the next maze. My daughter took on the role of relieving tension by expressing the obvious (We’re soooo lost!) and being silly, so that we would laugh. Both parents were content to let the kids lead until we got to number 11 for the third time. Then, map girl (that would be me) tried to get us out. We made it to number 11 twice more before we tried a new direction! In the end, we all took our turns playing the various roles: whining, joking, and navigating–which is good news. I read somewhere that families who are flexible in their roles fare better than those who are rigid.

Afterwards, I wondered if a maze adventure might be a good way to build work-team unity–or family unity. It certainly provides ample opportunity to have fun and learn about how we function in life. In the maze, the journey teaches as much as the destination.

In the end, we made it through the maze and managed to find all six stops. Our trail was 2.5 miles of maze which took us three miles of walking to complete. Afterwards, we had ice cream. I’ll measure the success of the outing by what both kids said the next day: can we do the maze again???

Rochelle Melander
http://www.RightNowCoach.com