Let’s Go for a Drive

I make observation while driving, and what do I peep?

Road, of course. Cars ahead go zoomzoom. Cars behind go wooshwoosh. Cars left and right go honkyhonk.

Observe also set of signs, lines, and lights — which all hath been designed in order to become automatic and unthinked part of road-zoomage process. Signs to indicate names of roads, signs to inform of distance to and from locations of reference, signs to warn of possible road-crossing by wild beasts, and many other signs. Broken lines for purpose of lane-keeping, solid double lines to indicate road-stretches on which passing is not permitted, lines with arrows that require turning, and so. Lights of scarlet give injunction to stop, lights of gold advise gas-hitting so you don’t have to wait at the light, and verdant lights permit to pass normally.

All of these things immediately present while driving are. Yet so engrained that human noticing-apparatus notes and makes use without necessity of thinking.

Yet much have we overlooked here!

Truly, much does pass without notice in process of vehicle-operation. For so engaged is driver in operation of vehicle that the physical vehicle becometh invisible. Awareness of driver is not on hands located at ten and two upon steering-wheel. Awareness of driver is not on window or mirror which provideth frame for real-time observation necessary for navigation, lane-keeping, and avoidance of accidents. Awareness of driver is not on physical body of car, nor wheels that go spinny-spin, nor even on the engine which maketh the car to go vroom-vroom.

When car operation proceedeth normally, physical presence of car recedeth from awareness like as the cockroach recedeth from well-lit room at the on-turning of the Light.

Was this so, reader, when first you became acquainted with vehicle-operation process?

Indeed no! When first to practice vehicle-operation you began, conscious attention was applied to every aspect. Are your hands in the right place? Are you looking in the mirrors enough? How do you turn the wheel so you complete the turn, neither turning too much nor too little?

Yet through process of learning ye grew to automatically perform all these tasks. Such process occurs with much learning that is regularly applied in arena of active living — embodied knowledge scurry away from brain and into fingers, toesies, and nether bits. Area of unaware, where thing/action/process become so close and obvious it becometh invisible — even so invisible that to speak of it appeareth embarrassingly obvious!

Let us make brief segue to consider phenomenon of rediscovery of the obvious.

Less than a baker’s dozen of days ago, I spake unto an old man who told me of his grandchildren. What most precious in them he found was this: that unto them the Wonder of the Earth shone new and gleaming as the First Day of Creation. What made his heart to glow when he spoke of them was, he said, that through them he rediscovered his own long-forgotten appreciation and astonishment at the obvious.

BEHOLD! The sun riseth.

And BEHOLD! The sun setteth.

“And does that really happen every day?” asks the ickle kiddo, her eyes shining with the mystery.

Big meaning in that.

But let us return to example of vehicle-operation in action. For while we began with elucidation of utilization of signs and markers as guides along the way, is it not the case that these too become largely occulted and automatic in everyday experience of driving?

How often has this experience occurred, gorgeous gals and buff boyos: when you hath completed your drive and stepped away from the vehicle, the thought hath lightningstruck you that you drove the whole way while thinking about other things?

For yes, even the application of conscious attention toward meaningful signs can becometh so automatic that the mind will become utterly absorbed in other things.

Thoughts about where you’re headed, possibly. Or, am I running late? Did I remember to turn off the oven? What’s going to happen on the next episode of my favorite show?

(And we all know a few buckos out there have a nasty habit of mixing vehicle-operation with phone-usage. Naughty, naughty buckos…)

For awareness hath a projective tendency to be not where it is. Or at least: awareness of individualist Westerners hath assertive tendency toward projective encounter. Individualist encounter-tendency which finds not its satisfaction in misguided appropriation of Eastern spiritual traditions that grew out of need to solve (fundamentally similar yet nonetheless importantly different) spiritual problems that ariseth in non-Western cultures.

(And no, I’m not saying Westerners who try Zen meditation, for example, are idly wasting their time working within a spiritual tradition that wasn’t cut to their fit.)

Until something uncomfortably obtrudes into car-operation process, awareness becomes absorbed elsewhere. Projective encounter with reality becometh hidden so long as mind itself distracts.

And without projective encounter with reality, only the children will shout with wonder: “And does that really happen every day?”