Driving

The other day I was driving the drive between Saint Paul and Wisconsin. It was night and I was wondering why I wasn't terrified out of my mind. Then I remembered.

I used to be insanely scared of driving. The idea of steering a ton of steel at tremendous speed was not an appealing one. Not only do you have to worry about your own actions, but the actions of others (also piloting their own hunks of metal) and random chance can trigger catastrophe moments notice. The forces generated by moving objects at that speed are enough to turn what used to be a person into many distinct, widely separated fragments. While I was learning to drive, I would emerge from each driving session with my shirt soaked through with nervous sweat.

The only way I managed to accept driving as any kind of a routine activity, was to confront my own mortality. I had to get in the car and think to myself, "I may die, but I guess that's okay." To be honest, I don't think I dealt with it in a particularly healthy way. I harnessed the power of slight depression and borderline recklessness. I was only able to cope with driving because at some level I was okay with dying. This is not how I imagine most people are able to drive. I imagine that most people are able to drive because they don't really think about the consequences of driving that much, or that they rationalize away the risk because they perceive it as small. The way that I imagine most people cope with driving seems healthier.

I remembered that I wasn't terrified out of my mind because, as I rounded the S curves, it was kind of okay if I died. Here I am, an ant in the colossal scheme of things and I find it hilarious. We build massive cities and vast networks of roads. It is fucking amazing, the amount of control we have exerted over our environment. Even if the kid in the next lane decides to bend over to pick up his cellphone and careens into me and I fly out my front window and end up in seventeen different pieces and none of those pieces are very good to look at. Even then, what a ride.