Several months ago my daughter was having a hard time falling asleep and it was getting late. She questioned her purpose in life as only a child of nine years old can do. What should I be when I grow up? “Get used to that question sweetheart cause you’ll never figure it out.” Please. Like I said that. I told her to go ask her mom. In reality, my first “response” wasn’t far from my thoughts tonight. I went to bed incredulous, recanting a host of issues to be solved with a list of many to be shelved for another day.
As I often do during reflective times, I picked up a car magazine to lose myself in narrative. This time finding comfort in the latest issue of Road & Track where Sam Smith took on the Loneliest Road in America. He wrote about desolation. Removing yourself, or in this case, driving yourself away from people, places and things in order to unplug the vein from the drip of dissension. I reveled in its simplicity.
He was in the desert of Nevada blowing through tanks of gas using a principle that I’ve learned from servicemen who fought for our country. If you see a toilet, you better go. If you have a chance to sleep, close your eyes. If you pass a gas station, fill ‘er up because separating one town from the next is a whole lot of nothin’. Sam was driving the new Ferrari GTC4Lusso which was inconsequential to the story. It was simply the road roller transporting him and his companions through time. The vastness of the landscape unburdening daily perils typically under a microscope, now becoming the small, almost invisible parts of life they should be.
“Well honey, you should pick something that allows you to question and discover. Either the deep reaches of space (me projecting) or the almost infinite details right outside your window down to the cells that make up all of life.” It was one of those teaching moments I hoped would stick. Because even when it seems you have the perfect job driving the best cars on the planet, it would seem we all need to lose ourselves to keep perspective.
Oh, and I put Martini driving light covers on the 911.
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