My daughter was driving me home from the office as the hazy dusk of a South Carolina summer day settled. We rounded a curve, and she said, “Look, it’s a bobcat!”
We’d heard about “the fabled bobcat”from Michael forever. Years ago my son claimed he heard a bobcat one night on the same stretch of a wooded rural road running to our lake cottage and ran home, breathless, feeling persued by “a bobcat,” but this family is a breed of skeptics. Unsupported claims invite ridicule.
“Bobcat?” I said. By the time I glanced up, it was long gone.
 Liza described what she saw. The rear end of an animal, tawny colored, with spots, no tail to speak of, definately a cat, but much larger than a house cat more like the size of our dog, but definately NOT a dog, and too muscular, “thick” was her word, to be a fox, (frequently seen on the road). Liza’s an artist, (If you’ve received a “patent medicine” postcard from me, she did the artwork), and has an amazing eye for detail. So on this day, we gave it to Liza. She’s actually seen a honest-to-goodness bobcat.
 ”If it hadn’t been for Dickie Grimm, I never would have seen the bobcat,” she immediately said after I gave her credit for a confirmed sighting, pulling into stop in front of our cottage.
“What do you mean,” I asked, “wasn’t Dickie Grimm your driving instructor? Did he tell you to look out for Bobcats?” I joked with her.
“He taught me to drive five seconds ahead” she replied as she continued, “If I hadn’t been driving five seconds ahead, I never would have seen the bobcat.”
She was right. I was driving, in the front passenger seat, in the immediate. Liza, learning from her driving instructor, was driving where she would be in five seconds.
 Where do you drive?
 Where do you drive in your business, relationships, and personal life? Only in the present or in the present with an eye on the future? If you only drive in the present, you miss seeing things where you’ll be in five seconds, five hours, or five years from now. Opportunities await those who recognize them, but if you’re so focused on the present that it prevents you from seeing into the future, an opportunity may be gone by the time the future becomes the present.
Drive with an eye on the road of the present and the other eye on future roads you may encounter. You might just spot a bobcat.
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