by AlicetheCurious » Tue May 23, 2006 7:08 am
Hava, your last post really brought out my inner psychotherapist. So, I wrote a big long thing, which, bleary-eyed but my faculties intact, I thankfully deleted before going to bed. I am not a shrink.<br><br>All I will say is that escape seems to be a big thing with you, as is helplessness. You seem to have abdicated the power to make positive choices and decisions, under duress, sure, but the nice thing about life vs. totalled cars, is that the divine miraculous secret hidden in the junkyard of life is that as long as you're alive, this power never goes away and never diminishes. It's yours.<br><br>Since you liked the car metaphor so much, let me tell you about Henrietta.<br><br>Many years ago, my sister and I started a business. For this, we needed a car. We had very, very little money, so we scanned the classifieds looking for a car that would do the job, at the cheapest possible price. <br><br>After we'd seen a few cars, we found her. Henrietta. A rather old white Dodge stationwagon with no extras at all, but she was very cheap, she started well, she was clean, and she could get us and a lot of merchandise from point A to point B.<br><br>I called my cousin, who was a car genius, and asked him to check out her insides. He declared her in surprisingly good condition where it counts.<br><br>Now, Henrietta was not much to look at, but my sister and I grew to love her like a third member of our team. Henrietta allowed us to do so many things that otherwise would have been impossible. She opened up new roads to us, allowed us to explore beyond the limits of our city's public transport system, and carried heavy loads for us with nary a complaint. My sister and I actually discussed whether there was something magical about Henrietta, because she was so good, so strong, so dependable.<br><br>When my sister got married and moved to another country, I gave her Henrietta as a wedding present. My sister had other cars by then, but her joy was heartfelt.<br><br>Here's the kicker: when I got myself a new car, I discovered that, although I still loved Henrietta, I developed similar feelings for Irene. Irene was a lot fancier, but she allowed me to enjoy the same freedom and mobility, and it was those things, rather than the cars themselves, that I loved.<br><br>The moral of this story is: why don't you go outside, put the key in the ignition, fill the tank with gas, and take your "clunker" for a test drive, carefully noting what it CAN do, rather than what it can't? If you like, you could even take it to a reputable professional mechanic and ask for his/her professional assessment.<br><br>You might be very pleasantly surprised at all the wonderful choices you can make when you're in the driver's seat of your very own car. <p></p><i></i>
