For a brief moment under the sun ...

The older I get, the more I notice lessons in everyday life.

It was another foggy day when I left home for the long drive north to Seattle. "At least it is not a ground-level fog" I told myself.  Driving for a long stretch in limited visibility is a pain and, thankfully, this was more like very low hanging clouds.

A few miles out of Eugene, I set the cruise control at 70. I was almost immediately reminded of the conversation I had with an old high school friend a couple of days ago when I told her about my travel plans for the weekend.

"How far is Seattle from your place?" she asked.

"Oh, about 300 miles, I think.  I typically take five, or five-and-a-half hours.  Sometimes even six, if I end up stopping to admire the scenery."

She seemed intrigued.  "Why that long for 300 miles?  At what speed do you drive?"

I suppose it is all a part of my personality. I don't care about speed.  It is not a competition.

Going from one place to another is also a metaphor for the journey that life is.  We are not racing towards the ultimate destination of our deaths, are we, when we live?  Life is that fascinating experience of what happens between the origin--birth--and the destination.  But, we often tend to use phrases like "I want to get on with my life" as if the current experience is some kind of an out of body experience!

But, no, this was not today's lesson. This is old for me.

It continued to be foggy.  There was no change whatsoever in the conditions. Given how much we talk of the similar geographic attributes along the continuum from Eugene all the way up to Vancouver in British Columbia, I wondered whether the fog and clouds will be my travel companions all the way to Seattle.

Fog or not, there are always a couple of maniacal drivers on the road. When I spotted in my rearview mirror a car that was weaving in and out of lanes, I hoped that the cops would nab that driver. Oh well ... I bet the cops were at the donut shop!  I try to move out of the way of these maniacs on the road because it seems like they get pissed off at the slow ones like me. Even when we go about minding our own business, there are people who get annoyed at what we do. It infuriates them. Such is life.

No, this was not the lesson either.

As I neared Portland, the fog seemed to lighten. The temperature gauge display flirted with 40. I rounded a curve. And like that the fog was gone.

Blue sky. Wispy white clouds. Bright sunlight. A chilly 39, yes, but no fog. Life cleared up.  The river and the skyline with the buildings seemed magical.

I was thankful that I had with me in the car the CD that had the song for the moment. I played it. I sang along with it.

I crossed into Washington.

A few miles later, just like that, the sun was gone. The blue sky disappeared. It was foggy, again.

It was only a matter of minutes. A brief ten or twelve minutes of sunlight.

When we are in a fog, it could very well be that going a few miles is all one needs to do in order to get into the clear. In the fog of life that we sometimes find ourselves trapped in, well, perhaps a slightly different way of thinking about our existence can clear our troubles?

By the same token, when everything is going well in life, it could very well be that we have no idea of the fog bank that is only a little bit away in the direction that we are headed.

We simply have no idea what awaits us in the journey that life is. All we can do is be good drivers, with reliable vehicles that we maintain well, watch out for maniacs ... and then, shrug our shoulders as the French might and say C'est la vie.

For now, enjoy that moment under the sun.