because, unexpected is awesome.
I had a lot of expectations about what would happen today.
Usually, when one has expectations, we talk about whether they were met or not, but I’m not interested in that because I make it a point to have only factual expectations for things. That way, I’m never disappointed, only pleasantly surprised.
Today I expected to have a pleasant drive to Bakersfield with my windows down and my country music up. There, I expected to have a basque lunch with my old room mate Joe. After that, I expected to have a short drive down to LA, where I would meet up with friends.
Actually, all of these things did happen, but the most interesting and memorable events were those that I could not have forseen. There’s a famous quote,
life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans
and I love it. Too many people try to plan every detail of their lives, and in doing so, that they end up missing what is right in front of them. They worry when their lives aren’t going according to plan, and find satisfaction when it seems on track.
Life is unexpected, and it’s completely indifferent of what our plans are, so we might as well embrace uncertainty and all that it brings us.
While sitting in the driveway earlier today, I found that when I plugged in my phone to the casette to mp3 player, the country music would not play. I tested the phone’s audio without the cable. I took out the converter and put it back in. I blew off any dust that may have been trapped inside the gears. Nothing seemed to work. The only solution was to get a new one.
But where would I find a cassette to mp3 converter at 8 AM on a monday morning? I quickly did a search for a fry’s electronics on my route. There weren’t any on the route, and they didn’t open until 11 AM. Radio shack? They didn’t open until 9. I wasn’t about to wait an hour just to find out if radio shack carries one of the converters, so I decided to take off. I was utterly defeated, and I screamed out in frustration. The contents of the monologue are not required for comprehension, so instead I’ll describe the emotion involved. Utter anguish is a 6 hour drive to the south with no country music. If you cannot empathize with this, I implore you to replace country with your genre of choice.
It occured to me that this behavior was strictly out-of-whack and uncalled for, but I’m used to that, it’s pretty characteristic of me. Furthermore, I was alone, so no one would hear about it. That was the first difference of being alone. Your true emotions are exposed, unhindered. If I were with another person, I would not have reacted the way I did. Being alone afforded me the ability to express my own raw emotion: the real thing for what it is, rather than what it should be, which used to be a fairly rare occurrence for me.
The second thing you realize when you’re completely on your own is that if you don’t do it, no one else will. This is something that you’ve probably felt every once in a while, but you don’t really know what this means until there literally aren’t people you know anywhere near you. If you didn’t pack it, it’s not there. This means that if you’re unable to do something, it doesn’t get done. You are limited by your ability to find solutions to problems and situations. In this day and age, it’s easy to become reliant on other people. From the very day we’re born, we have people in our lives who guide us in the right direction, and somewhere along the way, we lose that. There’s always someone who can help us do something if we can’t. When you’re alone, it’s you yourself, and you.
People deal with independence in different ways, but more often than not, if they can, they shift that dependence onto new people, rather than developing a sense of self-efficacy. In a practical example, if I could not figure out how to get a cassette to mp3 converter, I was not going to have country music. The thing that most frustrated me was the fact that no matter what I did, I could not make it happen. All the electronics stores were closed, and soon, I would be on highway 5, where there the only shops sell fresh produce. I love fresh produce, but not when what I really want is my dear country. The situation was completely out of my control, and when I was just about resigned to driving 6 more hours in silence, I saw a sign on the side of the road, and a glimmer of hope struck my conciousness.
It was one of those geometrically-constructed logos. A vibrant red circle, enclosed by a white ring of appropriate width, enclosed by yet another ring, this one red again. As if the proverbial bullseye was hit in one instant of clarity, “Target may have it”, I thought. The exit fast approaching, I merged 3 lanes, and got off in a hurry. Could it be, that they may carry such a prehistoric device?
It turns out they did, so I bought one. You should have felt the way I did when I popped it into the cassette player. The anticipation of Luke Bryan’s soothing and playful voice, excited me beyond belief, but to my complete chagrin, his voice was interrupted by a loud churring sound, characteristic of a broken cassette player. A few fleeting moments of existential satisfaction gave way to frustration and rage. The sound was unbearable, and it would not do — I considered just tolerating it for a second, but it was too bad.
Fortunately, the guy who helped me before happened to mention that there was another version of the converter in the automotive section, so I went back in and located that section. With the help of another employee (I wouldn’t have found it without her), I got it. I bought it hesitantly and returned the other. In an almost unbearable instance of suspense, I loaded the new converted into the cassette player. It worked. I screamed in what would have been a silent celebration. My car was countrified.
The significant thing about this experience was the radical vicissitudes that plagued my emotions during this period. Living with full and vivid emotions is living fully, not some repressed version of it. Embrace extreme emotions, don’t elude them.
Soon enough, I was back on the road, and I thought it might be a good idea to use waze since I’d be in LA soon, and the traffic is likely bad. Little did I know that I wouldn’t even need to get to LA to hit a traffic jam.
There was a considerably-sized accident on the grapevine, and the 5 lane freeway had been condensed into 3 lanes. “At least it was moving,” I thought as I was watching the cars ahead of the 3 lane bottle-neck. That’s when I noticed a police officer walking across the lanes of traffic, which had stopped right in their places. We were no longer moving. The initial feeling of confusion was quickly over-ridden with awe, when a helicopter proceeded to land on the halted highway.
Restless people stopped their engines, and got out of their cars. A few snapped pictures like the one above. I was fortunate to be close enough to the spectacle that I wasn’t bored.
When the helicopter re-entered the air, the traffic flowed as usual, but the difference was that there was a 20-minute or so gap between the last cars that had gotten through before the helicopter landed and where we were. This meant that I had an open road all to myself; I drove faster than I ever have. It was exhilarating. And, I more than made-up for the time lost in the traffic jam.
Now that I’ve experienced moments of extreme speed in my car, the next spontaneous decision is a moment in which my car was completely stationary. My parents told me not to sleep in it, but I couldn’t resist. I had to try it, so I did. There’s a lot to be said about the things we take for granted in our day to day lives, but those things become clearly evident once you live out of your car. Even the most basic of hygienic needs become a challenge. It occured to me that if I had to go to the bathroom at any time during the night, the only place I could go was Ralph’s, which was at least a 15 minute walk. I brushed my teeth on the street with a bottle of water, and I lost a contact when it fell to an unknown location.
For now anyway, it seems that so long as you’re doing it by choice and not out of necessity, living out of your car is quite alright.
Today was filled with firsts. Most of them unexpected, and all of them meaningful. Sometimes, I think that planning things is more of a courtesy than anything else. When you live for spontaneity, you live outside of a plan. You live raw and free, and you take a sip of concentrated life — not that diluted Starbucks bullshit.
