drive.

There is something very right about driving home late at night with the heat blasting and windows down so that I can smell the crispness of the snow and the accompanying woodstove smoke. I had my music on and I had it up. I had it up loud. And like I said, it was very right. I got lost, intentionally. I like to do that, it makes me learn how small places really are. It also provided me with more opportunities to take in the Christmas lights on the houses. I’m glad I live in New England- they do it right with white lights and candles in the windows. “And it might not be the prettiest thing you’ll ever see…but it’s a new day…” that’s what was playing.

I wonder if making decisions in life feels like getting lost, only to learn how small and intricately connected life is to begin with. Maybe it only seems like the long way because it isn’t familiar or isn’t the norm. I think that our culture confuses what is normal with what is right. I really do. And I wish more people challenged that.
I think that taking the normal way only means you know what’s coming, it means you can multi task and still get there, or let your mind wander while you maneuver along the well lit road with others. Sometimes we get to places and realize that we have no recollection of the drive.

I don’t want to live my life like that.

I’m petrified of arriving at the end, with a gasp at the realization that I was unaware of how I was spending my time.
Because the reality of that would be that it was wasted…and no one desires to face that kind of tragedy about the most precious gift they could have been given. Surely no one does.

And I don’t care if it’s hard, or seemingly long and out of the way- and perhaps therefore lonely at times. I don’t care if it stings when it slaps, I don’t care if it makes me cry, I don’t care if it hurts. If it means that I am intrinsically aware of what is going on at all times, and that I am taking in the necessary details as I go, then I think it perhaps how it was supposed to be…unpredictable, challenging, fault finding, and inevitably an opportunity to grow- or perhaps learn? Both.

And if I’m to take it a step further and apply it to my faith, I think it falls into place a little bit. I was given life, and then, in a way, I chose to give it back. To say that although the choice is mine, I have decided to suppress what I think I know, in order that I may listen to someone else’s directions. Although listening to direction isn’t so easy. It requires constant attention to detail and doesn’t leave room for any lack of involvement on your part.
So that regardless of what I have already seen and understood, regardless of what I think I know, or even do know- I am instead to disregard it as normal and normal as a waste of time- although it may not seem like it at first. It will seem like that in the end.

By the end of my wanderings I had rolled the passenger window down too. I was leaning forward so that my arms were covering the top of the steering wheel and my chin was almost resting at the top. I was eventually dumped out onto Essex Street, and as I passed the small green street sign that inherently said to me- "now you know where you are"- I was happy to pay less attention to what I was doing and more to what had just been done. Which, in effect, then led me here.

I don’t want to live my life only to arrive and realize that I hadn’t paid attention to how I got there. Not for a moment.