Driving Your Dream Car Called Progress
What You Drive is a Matter of Choosing Your Options
Driving the Parental Car
I woke up this evening (yes, I am still a night owl) with this thought:
Your cars are often your way of carrying around the resentment of your struggles.
And I realized that most of my life, everywhere I have driven, my resentment has gone with me. And it has caused antagonistic relationships. Especially in my close relationships.
And most especially in my relationships with my parents.
For I resented that I had to grow up in a house of continuous anxiety and the resulting stress. All because my parents were always fighting.
And for some reason, instead of deciding not to live like that anymore, I actually chose to embrace it. And lived with it for most of my life.
Simply because I was so used to driving around in the same kind of vehicles my parents drove. So, I’ve spent most of my life driving around in the cars of Constant Angst Resulting in Self-sabotage.
And until now …
Stuck With a Clunker
I never realized it. For decades I didn’t know that I could change the kind of vehicle I rode around in. For decades I didn’t know that I was limiting myself by choosing to do what my parents were doing.
All because my mind was conditioned to believe that I had to be like my parents. That I had to do what my parents did. So, I was, in fact, reliving my parents’ lives.
T was stuck driving an old mental clunker.
John Bradshaw calls it “mystification” in his book Creating Love. He says when youaren’t allowed to be yourself, when you aren’t validated for being who you really are, you start living in a trance.
You start enacting out the role of who you think your parents want you to be. In other words, you choose a clunker, or a ‘false self,’ instead of choosing who you really are. Instead of choosing a ‘challenger.’ and being your real, authentic self.
And you actually think you deserve that clunker. For you think that is who you really are. Because your parents find your false self acceptable.
Doomed by Your Unconscious Choices
So, you can spend your whole life thinking you know who you really are. And become unhappy when you find yourself driving around in the old clunker car that you’ve chosen as an automatic reaction to your suffering.
Chosen as an automatic result of your self-delusion.
Chose because of an unconscious automatic rejection of your real self
And you can even become mortified when you one day see you are driving around a junker. And you don’t even know you had a choice. You don’t know that you chose it. Simply because you don’t really know who you truly are.
You can even become horrified at the thought of who you actually have become. For you may have become someone who you don’t recognize, someone you don’t approve of, someone you didn’t really want to become.
And you often feel so depressed and down on yourself that you can’t stand yourself anymore. Until …
The Day of Reckoning
One day you realize something amazing.
One day you realize you aren’t who you belived you are.
And you are totally shocked.
Because you discover that who you really are is the person you really desire most in this world to be.
For you recognize the person you really are, the person you really want to be … the real ‘me’ was inside you all the time.
You see the person you really are is actually the person who sees yourself driving around in cars that are carefully attended to and regularly serviced. Cars that are even rebuilt to specification. Using your own suggestions. Your own inspirations. As well as your own aspirations.
For the car you own is really yourself. And you can intentionally choose which model you will become.
The Challenge of the Challenger
Your real challenge in life is: Will you be seen driving around in a challenger that’s authentic and represents success? Will you drive a reconnaissance car through adventures, mishaps, and even daring suspense?
Will you travel the world in a car that cruises ambitiously on rendezvous of splendor? Or will you careen aimlessly and recklessly in your self-sedated, self-delusional sedan called your false self for the rest of your life?
For the choice is all yours. Everything you choose from this moment on is totally up to you. Don’t choose to drive your life over a cliff. Instead drive up the difficult and even dangerous mountains to self-discovery. In life’s challenger.
For when you choose the challenger and take it on a trip up that mountain, you may even find prosperity and abundance.
Don’t deliberately settle for driving a clunker, a junker, instead of Dodge’s version of the Roles Royce. For it’s often all a matter of what you aim for.
And even though your dream car may seem out of your reach, it’s not really whether you actually get to drive that dream car that matters. For what matters most is who you become.
Whatever car you drive, whichever path you drive on, remember what Epictetus said: “from now on then, resolve to live as a grown up who is making progress.”
And true progress happens when you realize who you really are, and you decide to be the best you possible. So, drive your dream car called progress starting today.