Driving Meditation

While our town is in a growth spurt, traffic slows to a painful crawl. City planning and road building that might have anticipated this is now playing catch up. So while the roads are overcrowded, they also have construction going on to remedy the congestion.

I have several options with how to handle the pressure of this forced non-doing. I can rage and rant at being confined to moving in millimeters where once I could sprint. Ask anyone in a wheelchair what such rage can do. It has some potential, but not for me. I can growl at the others on the road and send them sign language of hate. Maybe I can even figure out who was here first. But so what? Someone else was here before me and they let me "in".

I could fret and worry over the cost of gas, the value of my time, our government and city planners, etc. But that gets me too distracted from what is really important: right now.

One time I even tried knitting while in traffic. I wouldn't recommend it. Both the knitting and the driving suffered.

The only useful transformation of traffic time that I have found so far is in doing a driving meditation. It's simple. I breathe in and know that I'm breathing in. Then I breathe out and know I'm breathing out. That's it. I observe the feel of the steering wheel, the sun on my body, the press of the seat on my back. I look at vehicles, people, plants. And I breathe. Upon arrival at my destination, I am ahead of the game by the deep sense of calm and peace that I have gained. Maybe I'm behind on the clock, but I've leapt ahead on what matters to me: peace of mind.