Okay, let’s see who’s never told their GPS to shut up with a mixture of smugness and spite, convinced that this cold, soulless machine has no idea about shortcuts. You’re driving along, distracted thinking about the immortality of crabs or that ten o’clock meeting, you miss your exit, and with that infinite patience that borders on mockery, the device tells you in its neutral little voice: “Recalculating . “

And that’s when the inner Roman general in all of us comes out. You snap at the dashboard as if the satellite were giving you the evil eye: “Shut up, you infernal contraption, this is a shortcut and I know exactly what I’m doing .” Two hours later, lost in an industrial park inhabited only by melancholic pigeons and with the fuel tank practically empty, you’re still keeping your jaw clenched. Admitting you were wrong feels more painful than a wisdom tooth.

It’s a comical scene, I know. But there’s more to the joke than meets the eye. Because what we do in the car is exactly what we do with life, with our calling, and, for that matter, with God. We’re terrified of being taken off course.

Saint Augustine, who knew a thing or two about this long before digital maps were invented, spoke often of that subtle pride that makes us confuse stubbornness with strength of character. We believe that changing our minds is a sign of weakness, as if bowing to the evidence were a personal defeat. And that’s how it goes for us. We confuse strength with driving straight into a wall with the accelerator floored, lest someone mistake us for indecisive.

Stop and think about it for a second. How many times have you stubbornly clung to a project, a grudge, or a position simply because “you already said so” ? How much time do we waste in that subtle retreat, glancing around to see if a neighbor sees us as we make a U-turn in the middle of the street? Pride is a strange beast: it prefers the most appalling ridicule to uttering a humble “I was wrong.”

True conversion—that solemn word we sometimes imagine is reserved for hermits in the desert—begins precisely there. It begins the day you are able to look to the heavens, or to your own conscience, and accept with a wry smile that the divine GPS knows perfectly well why it’s sending you along the bypass instead of through the center.

God isn’t a tax inspector waiting for you to slip up so he can fine you; he’s more like that patient co-pilot who endures your frustrations with a smile and repeats to you, again and again, with infinite tenderness: “It’s okay, my child. Start again .” The grace of the Christian life is that there’s always room for course correction. Mercy is, at its core, the divine art of recalculating .

So the next time you take the wrong street, or take the wrong turn in life, save yourself the frustration with the time machine. Take a deep breath, laugh at yourself—we all need it—and let them change your route. After all, arriving late but at your destination is always better than arriving first anywhere.