Stop and Smell the Asphalt

A friend of mine has a very nice sound system in her Mercedes. I won’t comment on what was playing on it other than to say we have different tastes, but the sound quality was excellent… and loud.
 
“You must think my car is awfully quiet,” I said.
 
“I have to admit, I do,” she responded.
 
90% of the time I drive with the radio off and no MP3s synced by any hard or Wi-Fi connection. It’s not a hardline rule. It’s not a rule of any kind. On long trips or when stuck in traffic or just on random whims I do sometimes turn on the radio for the talk or tuneage. When cars still had CD players (neither of my current vehicles do) there was often a recently acquired CD in my glove compartment; it was sometimes more convenient to listen to it for the first time in my car than elsewhere, but it still remained in the glove compartment for 90% of my outings.
 
From the first day I was licensed I’ve found something Zen about driving. This doesn’t make my driving better. (According to AAA 73% of Americans rate themselves as above average drivers, which suggests that self-judgment in this matter should be regarded cautiously in any event.) I simply mean that there is something about driving that encourages being in the moment: feeling the acceleration and deceleration, smelling aromas from within and without the vehicle, seeing the flickering shadows of leaves on the hood, sensing the wind stream (when the window is open) in every one of the five possible ways (yes, it even has a taste), and of course hearing the cranked up radios in other cars as they pass. I generally prefer all that to the distraction of my own car’s sound system – not always but generally.
 
I am not alone in this response. A book title caught my eye the other day: Learning to Drive into the Now: PRND by Solan McClean. It was a quick read. I’m not typically one for self-help books and this one didn’t convert me to the genre, but he says some things I always have felt (along with some things I haven’t and don’t). “Now is the only reality we have,” he writes. “Everything else is just our mind creating a future that doesn’t yet exist or remembering a past that no longer exists… When people talk about stopping to smell the flowers, they are talking about taking the time to stop and be fully present in the now.” Like myself, he finds being behind the wheel a prime location to experience now. PRND, by the way, is his mnemonic (taken from the settings of an automatic transmission) for helping people for whom it doesn’t come naturally to get into the groove of “conscious driving” (so much better than the other kind): Practice, Relax, Now, and Drive. He expands on each. For transmissions that have an L setting he adds Let Go. (Um… yeah… As I said, he hasn’t converted me to the self-help guru genre of literature.) While I don’t find his PRND thing particularly useful, I do share his propensity for being in the moment on the road.

I’m a fan of contemplating futures that don’t yet exist and remembering pasts that no longer do. Planning ahead has not always worked out well for me. In fact, it usually doesn’t, but a lack of planning would be worse. My worst mistakes have come from not thinking ahead. As for the past, I have a degree in history, after all. Besides, some of my favorite people reside in the past. Past and future deserve attention. But they deserve attention so we can experience some time in something other than crisis-mode: some time when we can forget past and future… and not just for a few moments on a drive to the supermarket. Those are fine for a quick refresher but a whole day is better yet. Living just for today is mentally reinvigorating – not wise as long-term lifestyle but great for an occasional reset. Tomorrow we can go back to worrying about the day after tomorrow.

The Grass Roots - Let's Live For Today (1967)