Lessons from a Toyota-Master
Last summer, my faithful Toyota tried desperately to tell me something. Like when our bodies break down trying to call our attention whenever we stray from right thinking, my car gave me one of those life-correcting moments when it refused to go into reverse gear. Suddenly the car embodied all that we should be in terms of progress as humans, and refused to do anything except move forward. No matter how I played with the gear selector, it staunchly sat there as if to say, “Nope. I’m only moving forward from now on…no going backwards for me anymore.” A few thousand later I corrected this arrogant “attitude,” but it left me wondering and reflecting on my own progress in life.
Over the past few weeks I’ve reread journal entries from the past and discovered several disturbing trends: one is the preponderance of dogmatic thoughts throughout with fewer entries reflecting on the present moment or the future, and the other is that journaling occurred heaviest during times when I needed to whine about my condition or lack of progress. No mystery or surprise that journaling is therapeutic, and I’m certainly not condemning that as part of my journal experience. But I was rather disappointed that there weren’t more happy entries, more pages filled with observations and determinations about life ahead. I think I’ll start monitoring these trends and try to journal with a broken reverse gear (as it should be – permanently).
In recent years I’ve tried to adopt a “no reverse” attitude about life. I like to think that human progress implies looking forward, but memories always want us to reflect backwards. Things stay happiest when memories remain snapshots and intention focuses ahead. Sometimes we ignore this approach and repeat the past by making the same mistakes again, or failing to make lemonade when handed lemons. But if instead we lift our heads and look forward instead of always at our feet as though expecting something (the past) or someone to come up from behind us, positive outcomes will become an every day event. Opportunities will suddenly open, we’ll discover new horizons, and life will seem and be good. Like my Toyota, we could all do with a broken reverse gear. I want to reflect back years from now and say, “I used to have a reverse gear, but for the life of me I can’t remember why.”
One Response to “Lessons from a Toyota-Master”
Here’s a devil’s advocate thought for you… Wordsworth defined poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility.” He believed that you couldn’t write about an emotion while you were having it, only *after* you’d weathered & gained some perspective…
So I’m wondering this fits with the notion of not having a reverse gear? Maybe he’s talking about having a rear-view mirror that allows you to LOOK back w/out GOING back…?
This issue is fresh in mind ’cause I’m writing right now about Thoreau’s Week on the Concord & Merrimack River & Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. In both cases, they’re writing memories of their brothers YEARS after those brothers have died. I’m not sure that either writer would have written so great a book had they tried to write it in the immediate aftermath.
Just a contrary thought–grist for the mill…