The Long Way Around Is Still the Way
- Jesse Passafiume
- 23 hours ago
- 2 min read
I was a freshman in high school the first time I set foot in Berkeley.
Cal vs. Washington. October 1989. California Memorial Stadium packed, loud, alive in a way my small town never was. Washington won 29-16, but I barely remember the score. What I remember is the feeling. The campus. The sense that something serious was happening in the world and I wanted to be part of it.
On the drive home, something shifted.
I told my parents. Then my school counselor. I wanted to go to Stanford.
What I learned — quietly, wi
thout anyone saying it directly — was that "you can do whatever you set your mind to" had limits in our town. Limits defined by zip code and circumstance and the well-meaning skepticism of people who loved me but couldn't see past what was practical. So I put it down. And I did what I've always done.
I went to work.
Decades later, my son's baseball team was invited to tour the facilities and meet the coaching staff.
He put himself in that room. Not because of me — because of the work he's putting in, the choices he's making, the kind of young man he's becoming.
We wandered the campus after the tour. At some point he looked around, took it all in, and said:
"I like this. Let's make a run at it."
I didn't get to Stanford as a student.
I got there as a father.
I bought the hat on the way out.
The Four A's
Most people quit when the original path closes. They read a blocked road as a signal the destination was wrong.
It usually isn't.
Awareness — See it clearly. The path you drew isn't the path in front of you. Don't argue with reality.
Acceptance — This isn't surrender. It's clarity. Stop fighting the road and start reading it.
Adjustment — Change the approach. Never the standard.
Again — Go again. Not with the same plan. With the same commitment.
That cycle — run honestly and repeatedly — is what separates people who eventually arrive from people who have a good reason they never did.
The Takeaway
Most people are waiting for things to arrive on their timeline, in their form, on their terms.
That's not how it works.
Stay focused. Stay in motion. Do the right things long enough and the destination finds you — usually in a form better than what you originally imagined.
A fifteen-year-old kid from a small town didn't get into Stanford.
His son is making a run at it.
The long way around is still the way.
The Four A's — Awareness, Acceptance, Adjustment, Again — is one of the core frameworks inside EVOLVELO. Every business that scaled, every life that turned out better than planned, runs on this cycle. Learn it. Run it. Repeat it.
