Car Rides

Bob Seger songs always excite me, and inevitably get my juices pumping—no matter the mood I am in.  As his rugged melodies get louder and push the old time rock and roll more passionately into my ears, I cannot help but to smile and scream along.

So began my car ride into the city last week.  I was excited, I was alive, I was thrilled about life and all its elements: the foliage, the kids walking home, the three forty-five traffic, my mother (who I imagined dancing along with me to “the kind of music that just soothes your soul”), my boots.  It was all quite lovely.

Then Bob Seger stopped singing.  And as the radio turned to commercials, my head stopped tuning into the frequencies and I began my own monologue of curmudeonliness.  My thoughts slowly transmuted into those of an embittered, festering cynic. This turn is nearly inevitable in car rides driven solo for over fifteen minutes.  It does not last the entire ride, but it does seem to affect a major portion of it.  Once, recently, there was a notable exception—a drive to work (over an hour) in which I thought up such a grand idea for my classroom, I was so excited over my brilliance, I could think of nothing else the entire ride.

This was not the case during my drive to the city.  There were no light bulbs of creativity, no brushes with enlightenment.  Only traffic, commercials, and the outer city streets.  So, quite easily, I started listening to the murmurings in my head and soon was agreeing with them and readily anticipating danger and mistrust.  This particular monologue was about, among other things, a recent episode in which nearly $150 was found to be missing from my wallet.  My mind swarmed with the memory.  In an instant, I had gone from elation and a personal sing along to begrudging an experience that elicited an ever-growing dissatisfaction with my own irresponsibility and harmful trust in people—how could I have let this happen?!  I was disappointed, and mostly with myself.  The word “stupid” came up a lot in this detailed and repetitious conversation I was having in my head.

Eventually I became aware of this crazy, self-deprecating talk and it subsided, but it leads me to a couple questions on this slightly insane matter at hand.  One, and most important: What is going on here?   How is it that a mere interruption of my musical frequencies can so alter my state of being?  And, really, it cannot be the fault of the radio needing its sponsorship, because I can wander off into whatever fantasy I so dream up at any time.  I do not even need to be driving.  And two:  How do I make it stop?  How do I get the incessant rantings of my wandering thoughts to slow down to a pace where I can readily observe them and toss them aside if I so desire?  These, I think, are fine questions.  And, perhaps, there is a simple answer to them both: the present.

If this blurb of inquisition is to have any sort of conclusion, I say it is in the present.  It is only in the present moments of life that we are truly, freely at choice in our experience.  In being present, then do we get that the baffling notions of our consciousness are perhaps nothings.  In being present, we get to see—I get to see—that what we have is now.  The thoughts in my head that tear me up with notions of stupidity and klutziness are nothing.  They are simply thoughts.  And in being present, in getting that they are just thoughts and nothing more—not the truth, not existing in reality—I am free from their constriction and isolation.  And I am left peaceful and content.