I drive a 10 year old, 5-speed pick-up truck. It needs some work that my current budget and financial situation does not allow. Mostly it's work that, not completely and totally necessary, would allow for better gas mileage, better steering and things of that nature.
Still, it drives from point A to B, unlike the vehicles owned by my housemates. Since one of them
This morning I noticed the truck driving towards the right. I, however, was attempting to go straight and I had to grip the steering wheel harder than is normal to keep it from pulling off in an undesired direction. The pull was completely and totally noticeable, even to my passenger.
I've noticed it before, only it was 'me, being too sensitive to the subtle vagrancy of steering a 1 and 1/2 ton vehicle.' That is what I was told. Okay fine that's what I heard when I mentioned it to my
Uh okay, whatever. It's not fine, but if you want to pretend it's fine, fine by me, for you, but, as I shook my fist mentally, I know something is wrong.
As I stated, as long as it's drivable, right now financially, there is nothing I can* do about it in the way of repairs. So I compensate and apply more tension and attention to the steering wheel, don't drive with my knees, the basic, safety stuff required by most driver's licenses most anywhere.
What I realized today though, the weight of a passenger, causes it to pull noticeably to the right. No, not the actual weight but yeah the weight. Does that make sense? because it's important to my current self-identity and ego that it make sense. Which is really just me asking myself if I make sense to myself, while I stand by and notice that, none of this has to make any sense to an identity which is being shed.
Driving on.
This is not the epiphany. It's what I noticed while driving. The weight of others in the vehicle pulls the vehicle off course, but only when something is wrong with the steering/guiding mechanism.
During the milliseconds it took me to have that thought, I became the vehicle. The weight of others became the reason I'm being pulled off course and the reason I'm having to use so much of my strength to maintain a grip on the steering wheel of my life to get and keep it on course.
This feels like an epiphany. My life is off course because of the weight of others. It's their fault. If they weren't around me, my life would be on course. It would have to be on course because I wouldn't keep getting pulled off course by their weight.
Said another way. If I was alone all the time I wouldn't have to use so much of my strength to try and stay on course.
Still another way to say it. I don't want to acknowledge, access, or use my strength to stay on course and I would rather lay the blame on the weight of someone else for guiding me off course.
OH boy, the epiphany. It's my life. I have a continuous choice. I guide it on a course or I give over to some other power to guide it on a course. Either way, it's guided, and driving on.
I'm feeling bad emotionally because I'm perklempt.
I'm standing at a fork in a road where both forks end abruptly. There are no slightly overgrown less trodden foot paths. There are weeds, briars, trees, a funny smell and denseness.
My 'feeling bad' is really a bad feeling that I've traveled the wrong road and didn't heed any of the hidden curve ahead signs along the way.
I had this idea of what being my own authority looked like. I didn't realize it would become me seeing a trail no one else can see. At least I got here with understanding and compassion, not fear and blame.
Clearing the path is going to take many tiny steps, along with some gigantic leaps and bounds.
This isn't a closing paragraph.
*not true but because of where or how I've been sitting it sure feels like there is nothing I can do, immediately about it.
" but only when something is wrong with the steering/guiding mechanism." this seems apt.
ReplyDeleteThe wrong path seems to begin with "If I was alone all the time I would [...] stay on course." Once you start going there, it's bad - the weeds and funny smell. People will always be around you, no?
even cars,as you know, are designed to have passengers, even as many as 6, but as few as 2
in fact, motorcycles, the vehicles designed exclusively for one, are notoriously unstable and deadly.
How to fix the driving mechanism instead? Or maybe time to find lighter passengers?