GPS vs waze

As vacation rolls around we venture away from our safe abode and explore other parts of this beautiful country. That means renting a car so we get to places that are otherwise difficult to get to via public transportation.

The car, an upgrade (thanks, Hashem!), came fully equipped with a GPS, so we were confident that we would be able to get to our destinations with ease. (We don’t have smartphones, so there was no waze.)

Everything was moving along nicely. The fun started when we were driving towards Beit Shemesh.

A quick recap of recent history: when Beit Shemesh was first built, it was a very small town, and so it only needed a very small road leading into it. In the last 15 years Beit Shemesh has grown by leaps and bounds, and so it became imperative to expand the highway around it. They completed most of the expansion in the last year or so.

The GPS company, however, didn’t get the memo to update their software.

There we were, coasting along the new highway, when the GPS began to freak out (to the best of its GPS capabilities) and demand that we go back on to the main road. According to the screen, we were inexplicably driving well into an unlabeled expanse of grass somewhere off to the side of the map.

But we weren’t. The beautiful new road was passing smoothly beneath our car. We were really on the highway. The GPS was wrong.

We ignored the GPS, made it to Beit Shemesh, and had a wonderful time.

It got me thinking…

This wouldn’t have happened had we used waze to guide us on our trip instead of the GPS.

It would have gone something like:

“New traffic light ahead. The three eastbound lanes are all open and clear. There’s a speed-trap at intersecton x.”

How often in our eating do we listen to the “GPS” of a diet plan?

“Eat fruit every morning for breakfast. If you had fat with your lunch, skip the dressing for your salad at dinner, and don’t eat any carbs either.”

This doesn’t take into account any change of route that I might have taken that day:

I exercised, and so I was hungrier than usual.

I didn’t have any vegetables for the last two weeks, and so today I was craving a salad.

I ate a lot of meat, chicken and fish on Shabbos, and so on Sunday I wasn’t as much in the mood for protein.

In other words, each one of us is built with a waze app.

It guides us through our days and helps us make the right decisions based on what is in front of us at any given moment.

It’s called our intuition.

Let it guide you in life, especially in your food decisions.