Driving through the suburbs

I’m greatly enjoying the drive to work in the morning. As the freeway turns into a carpark during AM peak-hours, I drive to the city through the suburbs. In the mornings I always listen to very peaceful music, usually something like Duncan Sheik, or the soundtracks to Windy Tales, Solaris, Stay or Cypher. This morning I cued up the soundtrack to Someday’s Dreamers, and it was absolutely perfect.

So often now when I’m driving, I find that I really do enjoy the most simple things in life. I struggle with the terminology of ‘celebrating the mundane’, a catchphrase journalists are eager to use when describing works of art that don’t focus on events of a large scale, but rather examine and perhaps romanticise ordinary, commonplace things. To say that normal life is mundane now wouldn’t be right for me. I’ve often written and spoken before on Western society’s tendency to look only for the peaks in life, moments where success or extreme joy are present, often overlooking or shunning everything tha happens in-between. To me that is a terrible illusion; to think that the only life worth living is when things seem perfect. Sure enough, events that inspire great joy in us are wonderful things to celebrate, but there is so much other life to live that is equally important, and can give as much joy in various forms than those exciting times.

What I enjoy so much now is that often when I’m driving, I may not have just had a wonderful and inspiring experience, nor would I have had a terrible one with which to contrast my present; I simply love being here, doing what I’m doing – in this life, living it. Where I’m going and what I will do or what I’ve just done often have no effect on my enjoyment of the drive. That I’m on my way to work in no way inhibits the sheer joy I feel simply by engaging in the action of driving, be the traffic slow moving or otherwise. I’ve long ago stopped being frustrated by traffic-jams; becoming frustrated won’t make the traffic move, nor get me anywhere sooner. I’ve learnt to enjoy whatever it is that is happening in life, and that there are always inspiring things to see and perceive, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. Traffic-jams to me now are quite serene, and while if I can avoid them I will, if I get caught-up in one, it doesn’t bother me. If I will be late arriving to wherever I’m going, it is innevitable and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I’ve never enjoyed life so much – even during some of my most darkest times now, I still see how beautiful life is.