daily commute

Driving has become one of my current part time jobs.

Commuting 8-10 hours a week provides good solo time that's almost like an exercise in getting re-aquainted with myself in the midst of a hectic schedule.  Maybe that's what alone time is and why it's so needed--a chance to not forget who you are and what you're about--to not become a stranger to yourself in a world that won't slow down unless you make an intentional fight for things to be still for a moment.

That hour to school and hour back are filled with various things, whether it be listening to NPR, music, silence, or a new added activity: books on cd.  I used to hate books on cd, but I've decided that since I don't have much time for leisure reading, maybe I can learn to enjoy an alternative to reading. This last week, I finished a book on cd about Fred Rogers called I am Proud of You and started a series of lectures on medical history.  I don't know what's happening to me, because it used to take a lot for me to cry.  Now, small things hit me as being really beautiful or sometimes really sad, and I find myself tearing up unexpectedly.  Apparently we are supposed to pay attention to tears.  They hold secrets to who we are--mysteries that only get exposed when we are sensitive to listen.

The first chapter of I am Proud of You is here: http://www.timmadigan.com/proud/excerpt.htm.  It's a beautiful portrayal of Fred Rogers and his greatness.  I found myself wanting to know someone like him, someone who was fully human, aware of the pain that goes on in life, but also full of the overcoming greatness of choosing to love despite the pain.  The tears came when the author wrote of the "supernatural love" Fred showed him.  Fred was the kind of person who was safe-- you knew that you could never lose his love.  He was known to have a unique capacity for relationship--"a fearlessness, an unashamed insistence on intimacy."  That is something that I long to be okay with--to become fearless in my relationships. "Fred wanted to know the truth of your life, the nature of your insides, and had room enough in his own spirit to embrace without judgment whatever that truth might be."

Then, I got to the lecture, and I was struck by the part about Hippocrates, who once said, “Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity. ” He also wrote in Aphorisms, "Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult."  I would have liked to know him too, a man who viewed medicine as the way science becomes an Art.

I'm actually looking forward to what other things I can explore on this daily commute of mine.  Inspiration finds us in such random ways, but never did I think that driving the inner loop beltway would contain actual feelings of joy.