subject: Driving with Presence [print this page] Driving in a lot of weaving traffic, where just about everyone was going between ten and twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, I found myself musing on the fact that my vehicle was on cruise control, set to the speed limit.
That sure wouldn't have been me not too many years ago. I was always trying to get ahead, push the edge, shave a few seconds from my commute.
Whenever I drive now, I no longer weave, and I don't exceed the posted speed. Not for any particularly self-righteous reasons, but simply because the urge to get ahead, save a smidgeon of time, has evaporated.
I got to thinking about why just about everyone was so hell-bent on driving in the frantic, pushy, and at times extremely dangerous weaving-and-tailgating way they were driving.
It doesn't take much insight to come up with the answer, just a little observation of the expression on people's faces, their intensity, their angstand their total detachment from the present moment.
If you are going to relax and drive sanely and safely, you begin to let your thoughts inwhereas if you are shove, shove, shoving all the time, it acts as a way of distracting yourself from your thoughts.
Since most people have a great deal of anxious thought, distraction in any form is welcome. It's why many of us can't drive without the radio onor be in the quiet of our home without the television blaring even though we aren't watching it.
Driving maniacally is future-orientedgetting ahead of the car in front, beating the other driver to the lane, cutting a few seconds off. Our mind isn't in the Now when we are engaged in such behaviors.
What I realized is that because thought has massively died down in my life, if not all but gone, I no longer need a frantic sense of urgency to provide me with the illusion that I am escaping the present moment. On the contrary, I can enjoy relaxing at the wheel.
If you stop to look at so much of what we do in our regular routine, and the style in which we do it, it reflects how we are riddled with anxiety. But I sense that it's epitomized in the way we drive.
The antidote is to try a period of driving at the speed limit, not swapping lanes all the time, and with the radio off. You'll likely feel uncomfortable. You'll feel like "nothing's happening," and that you need to make something happen. You'll also begin to notice how pervasive your thoughts are.
I want to distinguish thought from awareness, however. The less our thoughts, which are those pesky gnats buzzing inside our brain, the more present we becomeand the moreaware.
