Curious about your spiritual condition? Allow me to save you a trip to the therapist or the tarot-card-reader if you’re looking to see if you’re spiritually intact. Just get behind the wheel of a car.
Let’s say you’re having a still morning. You placed the perfect ratio of coffee grounds in your filter. The news on your phone reveals no signs of the Apocalypse—maybe you lay off your phone altogether. You get out of your driveway on time. Then, someone in an Audi A4—or maybe an Infiniti Q60—pulls in front of you abruptly.
“Use your fucking blinker asshole,” is out of your mouth before your fist can find the horn.
Something about the carelessness of my fellow commuter cooks up quick resentment like microwavable rice. I instantly forget the times I’ve changed lanes without signaling or cut someone off. I mutate from man of peace to antagonizer without notice. I prove in my spontaneous expletives that I am not prepared for someone to get in my way.
It’s easy to claim a spiritual existence when things go as planned—when pedestrians yield and motorists follow the rules. A real test of your spirituality comes when it’s the other guy’s fault.
I’ve learned in recovery from drugs and alcohol that when I am upset—no matter how warranted—there is something wrong with me, something for me to examine. And it fucking sucks, I tell you. I used to be a real Houdini when it came to facing the consequences of my actions. But in order to stay sober, I have to be more like George Washington, admitting I cut down the cherry tree.
Part of the reason for auto-angst, I believe, is how easily anger becomes justifiable on the road. The rules of the highway clearly state that the speed limit of the leftmost lane is 10 miles per hour higher than what’s posted. When I cruise up to that slow-poke in the fast lane, I become irate. I check my side-view and speed up next to the dumb shit to get a good look at them. I want a face to position my anger just right. But reality hits at the next stop light when slow-poke is right behind me, five feet from my bumper. I abandon my serenity just so I can get to my destination five seconds more quickly than the next person. I’m forced to ask myself, is it worth it?
I know you’ve been on the highway when your exit is jammed up and instead of waiting in line with the rest of the working world, you speed ahead and wait for that car-length window of opportunity to swerve onto the exit. The situation presents a key spiritual dilemma: will you do the right thing now or pray for forgiveness later? I pray a lot, so I usually choose the later.
When it comes down to it, I just feel more important than my fellow driver on the road. You’d speed too if you had to get your kids to daycare and preschool before work. You’d flip that Audi A4 the bird if they disrespected you or got in your way.
Since my behavior behind the wheel is a true measure of my spiritual condition, then I should join the Church of Latter Day Assholes. I brought this all to my sponsor once. He laughed. A good hearty sponsor laugh that makes you wish they invented a portable punching bag. “Why don’t you make amends to all those people by doing a good deed for someone else without taking credit,” he suggested.
I took his advice. I forget what I did, and I couldn’t tell you anyway even if I remembered because the act would lose its spiritual weight the way a birthday wish won’t come true if you tell the others around the cake what you wished for. There are lots of ways to help someone anonymously. There’s the pay for the car behind you at the drive-thru trick (just make sure you’re not tailed by a minivan of little leaguers). You could pay expired parking meters as you pass by them. The irony is that the act of driving is ripe with opportunity to be generous, even if all you can do is slow down to let someone into your lane.
There is great power in acting unselfishly. If my disease is selfish in nature, then unselfish action fills my prescription bottle. And when I comply with my sponsor’s suggestions, I feel better. Even when I comply bitterly, like swallowing prescribed pills without water to wash them down.
Whatever you do, there is great freedom in the random act of unrewarded kindness. We’re all headed to the same place anyway—work, family, a court date for reckless driving—we’re all trudging this weary highway together.
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