Writing Prompt #4. Who is driving?

Again, I diverge from the given topic! They say a quote from a movie. I am choosing a quote from Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, (HarperPerennial 1991). Maybe this book is my favorite of hers, but really everyone I read or reread is then my current favorite.

My friend Deborah and I did a writing prompt around this today.

Quote from pg 224 in a letter from Hallie to Codi: "What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you are on, and the fact that you know how to drive."

The "I know how to drive" is what strikes me in this quote. So much of my life I have not felt like the driver but the passenger, not reacting primarily to my own thoughts, needs, desires or reactions but to someone else. Me, the peacekeeper, the one in service. Let me fix this for you. Let me do this for you. Co-dependent.

Seeing the many roads and at this stage in my life, knowing and really believing at an independent level that I can make my own choices - I drive. Certainly with concern and compassion for any others involved but now including myself as equally relevant.

I drive sometimes with the top down and my hair blowing in the wind feeling the sun and the shade of the passing clouds. Smelling the trees and skunks and road kill and cooking.

Sometimes I drive with the windows up and the music so loud I can't hear my thoughts.

Sometimes I drive too fast, wanting everyone else to get out of my way, my mission being way more important than theirs. Especially if I have caused myself time constraints.

Sometimes I go slower, wanting to look around (often at the bane of the me from the last paragraph in the cars behind me.)

Sometimes I leave the house without knowing directions to where I am going. My second ex-husband claims Garamin was created for me. I am now saved by Google maps and Siri and, conspiracitorally speaking, tracked by the same. My new big brother, Google.

So I have been the driver, as well as a willing and unwilling passenger and I know absolutely the destination can certainly be colored by the journey. Changing the "fine destination" to stressed, angry, happy or excited destination. So how can I completely color or visualize the destination without leaving some areas for shading to accommodate the human emotions/experiences on the road to getting there? Some fine destinations turn out to be so changed or rearranged by the time I get there! Can I accurately color the future? So what about intention? Do I set them? What about vision boards and dreams? Do I even consider vision or envision? How do I paint where I want to land, my destination?

The road I am on can be laced with, intersected by so many other interesting other roads. Other options like curiosity and ADD and boredom can cause many a change in my direction. And because I am directionally challenged I'm often turning left instead of right and vise versa. Your side, my side works much better for me! Lost is often its own unique journey.

I don't read the last chapter of a book without reading the character's journey through the middle. Because here is lies the richness. Here is where the ingredients, all mixed together, cook up into the serving/the destination as it is right now. And then we are off to yet another ...