Greatest Hits: Getting Lost

As I count down to my 50th birthday [mid-September -- yep, I'm a Virgo], I thought this would be a good time to post some "greatest hits" from a previous blog. To those peeking in here who might be new to my bloggarisms: for a few years I had a blog of sorts at Gaia (formerly Zaadz) -- a website for those yearning to foster spiritually and environmentally conscious community. Between 2005 and 2010, Gaia hosted a network of online discussion forums, and each member of Gaia also had personal blogspace if they so desired. But this past May, Gaiam, the corporation that underwrote Gaia, pulled the plug on all those forum and blog discussions by shutting the website down. I won't go into all the speculations as to why this happened . . . At any rate, the Gaia community now has a new home on the Ning network. But it's just not the same, and the blog set-up there is downright confusing. 

So here I am, in the big wild world of Blogspot.

I wrote the following post in response to one of Gaia's "daily Q & A" threads. This one invited people to answer the question: "When was the last time you got lost? What happened?" 

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The last time I got lost was when I "lost it."

Lost my cool while driving, that is.

I currently live in southern California, land of hot, howling, horrific traffic. I know that there are places in the world where it is worse -- Tijuana, Mexico, for example, can be a frightening place just to be a pedestrian. I have visited there on occasion, but it's not where I live and drive.

I've actually become rather spoiled now because I work out of my home, with stores and grub and supplies nearby, and don't need to drive that much. Years ago, when I had to be at an office at eight in the morning five days a week, I could never tell how long it would take me to get to work. What was normally a twenty-minute drive (under relatively gridlock-free conditions) could turn into a two-hour journey through hell if it had rained (southern Californians simply cannot handle rainy roads) or if there had been fender-benders. Eventually I took to listening to cassettes and CDs of good music, or lectures, and was able to savor the hours spent in the car that way. And sometimes I would practice a kind of "traffic tonglen," breathing in my own irritation as well as the frustration and anger of my fellow drivers, and "sending out" the warm sunlight on my forearms, the smell of good coffee, the remnants of the previous night's joyful dream, the radiant inner stillness that contemplative practice had allowed me to touch.

I prided myself on how good a driver it made me: ahhh ... so calm and so gentle, so smooth and serene, always giving people the benefit of the doubt, allowing access to my lane, not taking it personally if someone cut me off or tailed me. After all, we Cali drivers were really all in this together, right? The great majority of our highway frustrations were only temporary experiences, nothing to write home about, certainly nothing to remember on our deathbeds.

A couple of months ago, however -- after being spoiled by not having to drive daily, I was returning home from church, of all places, on a late Sunday morning. I was on the freeway, getting ready to pass an onramp. A line of cars was merging onto the freeway. Following the rules of sane and courteous traffic, each freeway driver was letting one person merge in front of them: freeway car, merger, freeway car, merger -- you, then me, then you, then me. It's what fair and proper and decent.

And then a man in a pickup truck decided to break this rule. In front of me, on this pleasant balmy Sunday.

I had done the right thing: let one car merge into the space in front of me. This man in the truck decided he needed to be in front of me too. He wanted to break into the line, when what he was supposed to do was pull in behind me -- where there was actually plenty of space, because there were no cars directly behind me.

And the race was on.

I sped up and moved closer to the car in front of me to block him out. He also sped up, and actually started driving on the shoulder of the freeway, determined to get in front of me. He managed to edge over and so I had to let him in -- unless I planned on letting him sideswipe me. Okay asshole, go ahead, get in there if you goddammed have to.

And then he gave me the finger. And worse, he did that thing that drivers do when they rarin' to seriously piss off the people driving behind them. He slowed down -- way, way down. I watched him as he kept checking his rearview mirror, wanting to get a reaction out of me. I wouldn't stoop to giving him the satisfaction of honking or flipping him a return-bird. Instead I drove with a smooth poker face, right up on his tail, as he continued his slow drive, trying his hardest to piss me off. And I certainly was angry -- but beyond driving about three inches from his tailpipe, I wasn't going to let him see it in my face or in my gestures. Motherfucker, I am in the right, I am better than you and holier than you and cooler than you, and I am going to teach you a lesson. You don't deserve to be driving within a mile of me, you prick. Yeah, shithead, keep on looking in your rearview mirror and swearing. Make my day.

So we drove like this, me right up in his junky-truck ass at about forty miles-per-hour, for the next mile or so, until my exit came up.

What had happened to my traffic tonglen? What had happened to The Peaceful Driver? I really cannot say. She'd "gotten lost," somehow ...

But to honor those wonderful drivers out there who manage to not get lost in irritation over annoying but ultimately inconsequential actions by other drivers, I offer this 1996 song of gratitude by Geggy Tah, entitled "Whoever You Are."

(You were still a jerk, though, Mr.Truckbutt who pushed in front of me. I'm sorry but it's true.)

--May 5, 2007 Gaia blog