I’m as excited as a trucker heading down the highway to be sending you another bulletin today!
We ought to have a ton of respect for the hard work the trucking professionals do. “Truckers move America forward.”
We can all agree that an automobile, a long stretch of highway, and all the time in the world give one a special feeling.
To look at it from the opposite side, isn’t traffic the worst?
I’m not necessarily talking about the type of traffic where the guy in front of you on route 23 is going a little bit slow for your liking. Although that is annoying.
I’m mostly talking about world class traffic.
Growing up in Washington DC, I had a steady exposure to the road activity in what’s considered a top three worst traffic city in the USA.
I’d like to take you through a thought experiment that was taught to me by my experiences in the Capital city. Ready? OK!
Imagine a four-lane highway with a cement barricade separating another four lanes on the other side of the barrier carrying cars going in the opposite direction. Now imagine A massive amount of tired and hungry commuters fighting to get a spot on the road. The road quickly becomes congested with cars; but traffic is still moving, at least. More cars come. They continue to squeeze in. The heavy traffic now starts slowing down to a crawl.
You don’t want to be late, but your ETA is drifting further and further into the future. Still more communters come. Now the traffic stops completely.
This is where it gets interesting!!
Let’s imagine you get completely stopped in traffic. Cars are bumper-to-bumper and on all sides, and you’re completely alone with no info. Let’s imagine you’ve got no phone, no Apple maps, no satellite, no YouTube, no reels, no nothing! Now several minutes have passed and you still haven’t moved…. Oh, and you don’t have a lot of gas in the tank.
Obstructed. Stuck. Jammed.
Just you, your car, and your bad attitude.
“How long will this last?” would be the initial question which would quickly get superseded by “can I survive out here?”
This was the typical evening commute in Washington DC.
The Game
In that situation, you would observe that a short time at a complete standstill seemed like a very long time. “This is taking forever!“
Then, to escape your anger and frustration for a few moments, you might stumble upon this game: “what if this moment actually did never end?” You and the car and your attitude had to face this circumstance for an eternity. Here are the rules: you knew you were in it forever and nothing you did could change the conditions. You wouldn’t age. You wouldn’t get hungrier than you were at that moment, etc. This traffic jam never ended, this exact moment was suspended in eternity: what then? What would that be like?
Follow it through with me.
First, you would probably try to entertain yourself. After a while you would go through stages of anxiety and fear and through stages of grief. Wildly angry, desperately afraid, tearful, agitated. But eternity is a long time. These would be followed by temporary insanity, playfulness again, back to fear.
At some you would start to let go of expectations and anticipation. You would stop waiting for something to happen. You would eventually start to surrender into the moment at hand.
What would happen is that you would notice the details of your situation more deeply than ever before. You would notice the weather and the clouds. You would notice the cars around you and the people in them. You would notice the light. Then you would notice your sensations. Are you thirsty? What is “thirsty” anyway? What is the felt sensation of a body sitting in a car seat? How does the seat feel against your legs, your back? How do your feet feel against the car floor? your hands as they loosely grip the wheel?
Then you would notice your mood and your attitude were different. Eventually you would move through the more superficial emotions and come into someplace beneath all of them, a place of peace that was underlying your experience.
What about you? What if the circumstances in your life were suspended where they are this very moment?
I’m willing to bet what you eventually would find is the truth of your situation at this very moment and at any moment is the same as above and the same as any situation that ever was.
There’s nothing that needs to happen for you to be at peace. You are whole at your core.
It might take you a while, maybe even the majority of eternity, but you would eventually learn there’s peace attainable now, in these little moments where you look inward and seek it. You would eventually remember that wholeness and peace are in you in that and this moment.
And actually, you would learn that’s the only place and only time that they are findable — in the present and in ourselves.
And obstructions (trafic jams) reveal their complex nature when they help us find the peace in ourselves by through their nature preventing us from connecting to peace from circumstances outside ourselves.
Yes, open roads, sunny days, and good fortune are great too. But, the idea that peace is not attainable unless something goes our way is a lie.
The lesson of the fixed obstructions in our lives is to show us our power and control we have.
So, the only reasonable next step is to live in acknowledgment of that fact and to tap into that peace on occasion, every day, as a practice, perhaps by playing this game.
Because the truth is peace is here at every moment. And that is good medicine.
In the meantime, “Keep on truckin’.”