“This is where cruise control is necessary,” David commented as we rolled along US-82 East, from Lubbock, TX to Wichita Falls, TX. He said it again after we had turned north on I-44, zippingthrough the prairies of Oklahoma. By that time, we were zoned out, hypnotized by the straight road lines.
Cruise control is nice, I do admit. In enables you to ease back and relax more as you travel. The trouble is, it’s easy to slip into a trance. I’ve actually missed exits along the road and didn’t realize it until the familiar surroundings were no longer familiar,because cruise control not only works on the automobile but my mind as well.
If you don’t practice awareness, you can slide through much of life on cruise control, missing the necessary stops, and exits, and scenery, not even aware of who your travel companions are.
That’s what I observed on the road, with my son, David, as the driver. Our best conversations weren’t when we were in a daze, relaxed, leaned back in our car seats, but when we were stopped for a break, and took time to notice what was around us, or when the road had changed, and we had to lean forward and watch for what was next.
“Look how flat the land is.” Or, “That looks like an old Dairy Queen, want to stop?” Or, ““What do you think about…?”
Are you cruising through life, missing out, or are you traveling wide-eyed, taking it all in?
Cruising through life seems to be a major malady of our day.
I don’t know about you, but my heart hurts for Juan Rodriguez, whose 1-year-old twins died in hot-car-deaths in New York. Juan is a broken man.
He was arrested after his twins, Luna and Phoenix, were found unresponsive in the back seats of his Honda sedan in the Bronx, allegedly after having been in the car for about eight hours, the New York Police Department said.
I read that and asked, “How does that happen? How do you forget your kids are in the back seat? How do you go to work for eight hours and not think about that?”
It’s not that Rodriguez is a habitually negligent parent. His wife said of him, “Though I am hurting more than I ever imagined possible, I still love my husband. He is a good person and great father and I know he would’ve never done anything to hurt our children intentionally. I will never get over this loss and I know he will never forgive himself for this mistake.”
Nonetheless, how does that happen?
“I blanked out,” Rodriguez cried out in horror.
According to one advocacy group, kidsandcars.org: “Parents suffer from exhaustion due to lack of sleep, stress and changes in their normal routine. Any one of these can cause your memory to fail at a time when you least expect it. Even the best of parents or caregivers can overlook a sleeping baby in a car; and the end result can be injury or even death.”
According to the group, between 1990 and 2018, there were 889 children under 14 years old in the United States who died of heatstroke after being left in a car. Last year, 52 children nationwide died this way, making it the deadliest year on record, according to the organization.
The cruise control on my car comes in handy and makes the journey a bit more comfortable. But it can have a mesmerizing effect, too, and if I happen to be tired and exhausted, and if I’m traveling an all too familiar route, I can forget where I am alongthe journey, what someone in the car just said, and if I’m traveling by myself, under the right circumstances, I could fall asleep at the wheel.
I don’t know who first coined the mantra: “Be where your feet are,” but I like it. It reminds me not to live my life on cruise control, in a daydream, or trance, somewhere else, but aware, awake, alive to myself and others around me.
And mindful of the people I travel through life with, especially the unobtrusive ones, the ones who have no real voice, the ones sitting alone in the backseat.