Monday, January 19, 2009
Meditation is like driving, but without the fear
Other and I drove our daughter C and her friend E back to Skidless today, four hours each way. I drove to, Other drove fro. Since I rarely drive these days, I am not very good at it and periodically get a stab of pure panic that I will kill something. At the same time, since I grew up driving a lot in California, it feels like second nature, and I tend to drift into auto-drive, especially on the freeway. So this morning, as usual, I repeatedly felt the flush of fear as I realized that I had glazed over, and snapped my attention back to the road, forced myself to concentrate, check the side-view mirrors, the rear-view mirrors. And it reminded me of meditation: the tendency to float off into past, future and fantasy, and the effort required to draw the attention back to the present. Just like life.
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1 comment:
That's exactly how I look at driving. I've been driving since I was 17, it's second nature, but I also have little panic attacks and always try to remember that it's like meditating.
And I do my best not to drive much.
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