Today I am grateful for the many messages I receive and lessons I am taught over the course of any given day, which then of course adds up to the millions of messages received and lessons learned over the course of my lifetime. Periodically (a little too frequently, actually) I whine about how I need direction from God/the Universe/the Creator and how God is not speaking to me. I call and cry out and pray, I complain, and God ignores me. But if I lift my chin from my chest, raise my head and my eyes and look up and around me, I’ll begin to pick up on the many ways I receive information and guidance from outside of myself.
This morning as I was driving into work I was remembering how many life lessons I’ve learned while driving. You can learn a lot about yourself and your attitudes about life, your state of mind at any given time if you pay attention to how you go about transporting yourself from one place to another. You can learn this even as a passenger, but my lessons are much clearer when I am driving. I talk a lot to other drivers as I maneuver my way through traffic: I can’t help it, it’s genetic. Get in the car with any Chamblee–whether passenger or driver–and you’ll find that each of us offers dialogue and running commentary on other drivers, on traffic, on the condition of the roads, etc. Some of us are quieter with this, but I defy any of my siblings to deny they have this trait in some measure. Whether it is nature (genetic information passed down through my father’s line) or nurture (learned by assimilative experiences growing up riding in the back seat of the station wagon with my father driving) we’ve all come by it honestly. I am uncertain of the extent to which my children have inherited this conversational characteristic as I have not spent a lot of time as a passenger riding with them. I am hopeful that their father’s genetics contribute a calmer driving disposition, though as I ponder this I reckon that he has his own processes of handling driving and drivers.
Several years ago I wrote an essay that I entitled, “Lessons While Driving.” Many of those lessons returned to me this morning as I was commuting in to work. When I went to look for the essay (I wrote it many years ago when I was living in Michigan) I couldn’t find it. But I will share one of the lessons I learned many years ago while driving: Sooner or later, we all get where we’re going.
Over 20 years ago I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania and had to commute 30 miles one way to get to my job at a university in another small town. About 98 percent of the drive happened on winding, hilly, two-lane roads with only about three places on the entire route where you could pass a slower moving vehicle. And boy were there plenty of SMVs on the roads. This was coal mining country of Western Pennsylvania and at least three days out of five found me at some point on my trip stuck behind at least one coal truck. Besides their being really slow and hard to see around (to pass on one of those rare places for passing), occasionally little chips of rock or coal might fly out and ding your car. I spent many hours in frustrated conversation with the coal truck drivers as we poked along to and from work each day. But it was on one of these trips that I made that important observation that has stuck with me ever since, including during today’s commute.
It had gotten to the point that I would plan my trip around the trucks (sometimes there was more than one of them rumbling slowly up the highway), biding my time until the passing zone came and I would fly around them. “Ha! Free at last!” I would gleefully zoom past them in my four-cylinder Dodge Omni we named “Meemo.” But inevitably after zooming past the truck and waving “So long, sucker!” approximately 10 minutes later I’d get to a stoplight at the edge of town and look in my rearview mirror to see the same truck rumble up behind me at the light. I had done all that fuming and sputtering, plotting the precise moment when I was going to finally get away from those slow drivers who were impeding my progress from getting home only to end up at the same stoplight at the same time.
It is a principle that I’ve seen played out over many years and hundreds of thousands of miles driving since then. No matter how much of a hurry I am in, no matter how I fly impatiently around people who are going too slow for my liking, regardless of how irritating I find some people’s inconsiderate, pokey driving habits: sooner or later we all get where we’re going–often at the same time. Whether it is a windy, hilly, two-lane back country road, a city street, or a five lane outer loop of the Beltway, sooner or later we all get where we’re going. I might get someplace three minutes faster than the car I flew past and I find myself wondering if it was worth the extra burst of fuel use or the aggravation only to end up in the same spot at the same time. Oh how I wish I could explain this lesson better.
What I have learned is to slow down, exercise a lot more patience and compassion with the drivers around me, especially on the highway. They are not driving slowly to make me late, and all the other things I regularly grumble about as I judge their driving ability, their indecision and hesitance in changing lanes, their basic understanding of the rules of the road. We are all trying to get where we’re going. Many of us are trying to get to work, some are trying to get home from work after the night shift. Some are worried about their sick mothers, others are trying to get their packages delivered on time, still others are trying to pick up their kids at daycare before it closes. There are thousands of stories and explanations behind each of those people on the road and theirs are no less compelling than mine. We are all trying to get somewhere, and with a little cooperation and understanding, patience and generosity, kindness and compassion, we can all get there safely and without incident, which I have been blessed to do–mostly–in the 40 years since I started driving.
I am grateful for the lessons I’ve learned about life while sitting behind the wheel of my car. There are more that I will perhaps share another time. Now it is time for me to take my rest so I am not a drowsy driver on my way home tomorrow evening. May we all experience generosity and graciousness as we take to the roads and may we arrive safely to our desired destinations. So be it!
Behind the Wheel (Note that I am parked...)
