You stop thinking about the distance driving in the way that other people think of it. Which leads me to the the rhetorical question:
Is every single human experience utterly unique and existing only in the realm of individual perspective?
Which is rhetorical and even silly to commit to the written word - but think about it. You get 'used' to driving vast distances.. it stops being the exhausting, grueling, minute-by-dragging-oh-for-the-love-of...let-me-get-there-already experience. It starts being just another day.
Of course, the implications are that there are never any true shared experiences, shared emotions, shared.. anything.. maybe an occasional ice cream cone, but even that experience is unique to the individuals involved. Kind of sad, really. Unless you get more licks.
But for me, seriously, being in the car 10 hours or out of the car 10 hours - no real difference anymore.
Perspective shifts. The paradigm is that I drive alot. It's no more tiring than any other thing I've ever done. Which means it never actually was gruelingly exhausting. I only perceived it that way.
And that's the truth, except that I'm less stressed on the way to shows, as there's only so much you can do in a car. At home, in the office, in front of the computer.. the work is incessant and endless. In the car.. it's just me and the ipod that now contains many audiobooks. I affix it to the steering wheel and between that, the control panel in the Prius, my cell phone in the cup holder, the GPS on the dashboard - it's like being on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, says Shakespeare (and then, much later, Lincoln).
10 Hours to D.C. No big deal, I say to my passengers.
They didn't buy it then, and having arrived, are not buying it now.
I know someone who recently returned from a 2-week trip to Europe and needed nearly a month to recover.
It's all in perspective, because that's the lamest thing I ever heard.
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I like your rhetorical question, and giving it a little thought (though, admittedly, very little), I do believe that individual experiences must surely be "utterly unique and existing only in the realm of individual perspective." And that even that individual perspective is subject to evolving (or devolving). I used to be able to take long drives in stride, and made them frequently back home and 7 or 8 hours to neighboring states to see, retrieve, return grandkids where I'd spend 8 hours going, turn right around and spend 8 hours with said grandkid for a visit, then the very next weekend do it all again and go back to work. Now, however, a few (say, 12-15) years later, and it's a whole 'nother story. And yes, I can take a trip for a couple of driving days, and spend the next several days recovering. It's all in age, condition, and perspective. I can work on making improvements in those latter two factors...
ReplyDeleteThanks for, as always, an entertaining and provocative blog.
Willa
LOVE long journeys on my own... don't get away as much as I used to... those journeys often used to result in falling in love with one album or another, and arriving hoarse-throated from singing!
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