What Your Transmission is Trying to Tell You

As I sit in storm-washed South Carolina and wonder about the universe, I'm distracted.  I keep thinking about PRNDL.  I saw it this morning and it triggered more than usual.  Sure, I shifted into Reverse and left the garage.  Backing away from my house for one of a finite number of times that remain (we're moving).  I put it in Park, as I raised the top--yesterday was sunny and a day for airing everything out the way only a convertible can.  Driving a car has often been a time for thinking about things and collecting thoughts.  When the top is down, more of the universe intrudes, and your thoughts are full of air (no, I don't mean you become an airhead). 
 
And, I didn't pause when I put the car in Drive to head out into the world.  I passed right thru neutral and got going.  Can I really have momentarily forgotten where i was headed just twelve hours or so ago?  Yes, I was on my way to the recycling center with another load of stuff I was finally letting go of as we downsize our lives.  So, into Drive I went.  I live in one of the world's flattest places, the Lowcountry of South Carolina (hence our preoccupation with tides and storms with names).  Because it's so flat, Low gear never gets to play unless you have a pickup or an SUV and you have to pull a boat out of the water.  But, remember, I said I was driving a convertible, so no boat being hauled enters the picture.  
As I rolled out along the drive and surveyed the lagoons for alligators and birds, i thought some more about DL.  DL became Dalai Lama and one of his quotes changed my drive altogether.  You see, the thought that came to me was this"Happiness doesn’t always come from a pursuit. Sometimes it comes when we least expect it.”   And there I was.  

No, it didn't last, there are many, many thoughts percolating up there to take me away from moments like that.  But just until the end of our street, something alive was happening.  By the time I reached the stop sign, the rest of the world clicked in.  A pickup truck pulling yard mintenance equipment came around the bend, a cyclist dipped his head and pushed ahead going the other way and me and my load of detritus headed for the way station that would lead my cast off "stuff " to a landfill, or a real recycling, i don't know which.    

Later, I wondered why I couldn't have just shifted into Neutral and coasted along for a while.  A part of me immediately noted that would never happen--it's that pessimism in me.  Another meaning for that P on my transmission.  As I think about it, the R has a place, too.  R is resistance, what makes us back away from those moments and push on through to whatever we are grasping for each day.  It's that wheel (samsara) we're on, except for moments like mine this morning.  Thanks.