I breathe easy as brake lights sizzle to life in the lane next to me and I cruise on past to merge onto a different freeway, leaving people idling on the interstate. Dodged a bullet once again.

My traffic app is like the concierge for my mental health.

I tap open the map and local freeways pour red with blood. Either the familiar bright red of dismal traffic or worse, the deep burgundy of severe parking lot crawl. These two shades dominate rush hour.

Portland offers many routes to nearly every place. I think I’ve taken most of them. When I run the time estimate on my drive, I will sometimes get one suggested route plus a few other options proclaiming, “Similar ETA.”

To paraphrase Robert Frost, the road makes all the difference. Within that similar ETA, I may get city skyline views, relatively consistent forward motion, and a little space to think.

Or I get the opposite.

Bumpers, brake lights, exhaust, and cement walls. A rat maze where you know the route, but not how much of your sanity will remain upon reaching your destination. Stop-and-go driving crushes my soul.

I will even choose to drive a few minutes longer when the route seems less likely to take years off my life. A solid trade in my book.

I am not writing an advertisement for smartphone traffic apps.

This is a celebration of choice. It is all around us when we pay attention. Choosing joy over expediency. Choosing the journey over arriving at your destination as less than you were when you began.

This goes for all sorts of decisions. Drive back roads occasionally. Choose stairs over elevator even when it is a couple floors up or down because the walk really can do us good. Put your phone down and notice what you see on your lunch or coffee break. Time still passes at exactly the same speed, but you will later know how you spent it. Will my social media wait for me if I have this conversation with another human occupying the same physical space? It will wait for me.

The key is knowing yourself well enough to know what sets you off and then predicting the best path to avoiding that. Sure, choosing favorite music or podcasts when I’m confronted with the burgundy route is important, too. Deep breaths and keeping my cool once I am in the thick of it.

But, one tier earlier on the pyramid of controlling the controllable is skipping the painful route altogether.

Much, much easier said than done. Because, like I said, the key is knowing yourself enough to know. Pay attention to what makes you uncomfortable. Even more important, take a look at the things you assume you know about yourself. How do you most want to spend your time? What makes you happy? Who do you spend time with and do they make you a better, healthier person?

We think we know where we want to go, but all that time in between is what we call living.

Even when a destination is the same, how you get there makes most all the difference. Maybe it’s a half-hour drive or maybe it is years of your life.  If you buckle down, you can graduate from college in about four years. However, it takes a couple million minutes of living to get there. Did you make the most of it? Did you make yourself miserable along the way? Whatever you are racing for, make sure you are proud of the destination and the process.

A destination helps us steer. But, we live in the process, along the route, and in the way we experience each day.