I've kept another blog for many years, more recently not really paying much attention to it in favor of "socializing" on facebook or watching videos on YouTube. Fact is I need to write more and so I'm consolidating online writing under this blog heading renaming it "Mindful Passenger". Why that? Easy. Well, is seems clear to me but then I'm a somewhat mad hat wearing wedding officiant/writer/filmmaker. We'll see how much sense this makes to you:
This year we got a motorcycle. The husband drives it, and I ride behind him. It's very different than being a passenger in a car, because you're completely exposed and *in* the elements. Of course, you're slightly more at risk of injury than when traveling by car but not by that much. Cars feel safer because they're enclosed, an envelope of steel and fiber glass that makes us feel coccooned, safe. Some drivers and passengers even feel like they're in houses, completely removed from the act of travel. Riding a motorcycle is a completely different experiance, but not because it is - only because the veneer of percieved insulatoin is removed. And I started thinking of how much like life that is, how removed and distant we sometimes feel because of perception when we really are all still here, in a community, impacting on others and being impacted on. Our time here is fleeting, a blizzard of seconds and paying attention matters. I started thinking about life as a ride, a transit in time and remembered a) a quote on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap declaring us all astronauts on space ship earth and b) a reference to everything in the universe - us included - being made from exploded stars. Stardust. We are all astronauts made of star dust traveling at 107,000Km/hr around the sun and every time I get wound up about something petty, that thought blows my fragile little mind. But this is life. This is a journey worth noting, and so here are my notes.
