I find it strange and slightly hilarious that one can findBraille located on any drive-up ATM machine. It's actually quiteconvenient, if you stop to think about it. No, seriously. Justthink about it.
If you're like me, you can't help but form an amusing image ofsome guy driving down the road, very slowly, tapping his extra-longpole on either side of the street, inevitably hitting other carsand causing them to swerve while, in the meantime, a long line oftraffic is forming behind him. And of course his dog is sitting onhis lap, head out the window and one paw on the wheel.
(At this point I would like to insist that I do not discriminateagainst the visually challenged. If it were up to me, this columnwould also be available in Braille print. Please forgive myimagination.)
Hilarity aside, this image is nothing less that that of animportant metaphor for life. Ray Bradbury, a favorite author ofmine, describes his experience with this metaphor in the afterwordof one of his books. He dreamed that he was a passenger in a car,the driver of which was none other than his own personal muse,blindfolded. Curious, he reached out to see what was under thatdark fold. He was startled when he found sightless eyes staringahead of them and grabbed the wheel in a panic, which almost causedthem to run off the road.
"No," she whispered. "Trust me. I know the way."
"But I don't," [he] cried.
"It's all right," she whispered. "You don't need to know."
Of course, this was just his metaphor for the process of writinghis short stories, but we can all apply it to our own lives,whatever it is that we do. The idea is to just let go. Stop takinglife by the throat, or wherever it is that you're grabbing, anddragging it along behind you in the hope that it will eventuallycatch up. Unfortunately, life does not respond to bullying, and itdoesn't really like being the passenger. Let the silly thing go andgive it the freakin' keys.
Oh yeah, and hold on.
Trust your muse, or your God, or your inner self, whatever it isyou believe in, to be the driver, leading you blindly into theunknown. Don't think. Just do. Just be. It can be liberating. Toomany expectations give us the stress we know so well in our lives,and that is rather stifling.
It's strange, to me at least, that we plan things years inadvance when we don't even know that we'll still be here tomorrowor next week. But that's in our nature. We are an orderly andschedule-driven beast. We try too hard to take the wheel on theroad of life and forget that sometimes a little cruise control isall we need.
And though it seems paradoxical, we are not bound by ourinability to see past the reach of our headlights in the darknight. We are free because of it--free to dream, free toappreciate, and free to simply live life. We can't see ahead, butwe don't need to. And when the thing is done, we are free to betruly amazed by it.
Write to Nick at
nick_davidson02@yahoo.com
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