Fourth Form of Madness

I woke up this Saturday morning looking forward to yoga and feeling in a generally mellow and reflective mood, basically in my own zone and space. Nice, it had been a very hard week and it was nice to be regaining some sort of equilibrium in my being. Off I popped in my cute little orange bubble of a car that we brought in the interim of our other car ever being fixed (6 weeks and counting) and which I have now fallen in love with. There I was cruising along only 20 minutes into my 45 minute journey just about to break into chorus with my mellow dreamy yoga cd when I realised I had a “klingon on the starboard bow” so to speak.

Actually it was a rather aggressive looking, awfully busy looking 20 something woman who had decided that she needed to drive a millimetre away from my bumper. Now I am no slow driver. Unfortunately I have always had a lead foot and it takes all my concentration not to speed (good awareness training now my radar detector has been stolen). As it turned out, due to my impending backing vocals I was about to deliver I had neglected to stay under the speed limit and was doing 10 km over. And still there she was aggressively pushing me along and swerving out to see if there was anything in front of me. I took a breath in time to realise I was buying into her aggressiveness and then tilted my rear view mirror so I could no longer see her and belted out my chorus with such conviction I think I saw the windows shudder.

On to a relaxing session of yoga which restored my “chill out” factor some what. Then I was back on the road heading home delivering a beautiful (slightly bias here) rendition of Om Namo Narayani when someone tried to run me off the road. Now I know merging is challenging, but here is a tip to keep in mind, when you are a full car length behind someone, don’t speed up and try to run someone off the road no matter how great the urge! There I was one minute blending harmoniously with the universe (hee hee) and the next I was up on the kerb and heading for someone’s wheelie bin. Let me tell you, no-body puts baby on the kerb (baby being my cute little orange car). Something within me dug in and decided to stand my ground, I flicked on my indicator (always polite) and reclaimed my spot in front of the car that had tried to harm my person. Then I proceeded to drive at 40km in a 70km zone until he eventually turned off (okay I have my vindictive side that also enjoys the occasional day in the sun).

Breathing a large sigh of relief and feeling that I was in the clear for a calm and non-eventful drive home I looked into my rear vision mirror only to spy another klingon, this time male, getting ready for a rear bumper push on. First thought was “What is with the world today?”, second “what am I doing to attract these drivers into my life?”. Neither question was answered a I was far to engaged now with the driver behind me, exhausted I allowed myself to be sucked into his world, his creation. I was now officially vexed and I became the crazy lady who, even though every cell knew I should just let him pass me and let him drive out of my life, for some reason decided to embrace the second option, which was to allow him to pass and then drive as fast and close to his back bumper as I could.

I still love that part of me that stands up occasionally, that crazy, dark, self justified part of me, that always fights for the under dog (this time it was me :-)). My mother once came home from parent’s teacher night and told me pretty much each one of my teachers advised her I should be a defence lawyer and if they were in trouble they would come to me for their defence. I have always been able to find that strong, argumentative side of me when needed but most days now I chose to give it a rest. So there it was out in all it’s glory and making a day of it, it didn’t take long for the guy to turn off probably to escape the angry orange vision behind him.

I decided at this point that it might be a good idea to bring in the heavy guns and put on some crystal bowl chiming and started to concentrate on my breathing. So there I was chiming along and concentrating on my three part breathing, hoping to get home in one piece with no more angry drivers (including myself by this stage). As I cruised along, I couldn’t help a little smirk for that side of me that stepped up and out with force. I never deny these sides of myself, I find this just leads to a long trip, down a narrow, dark rabbit hole. Best to embrace all parts, but perhaps allow yourself enough of a pause to decide if you wish to bring them forward to handle an event at that time. Just as I was about all chimed out, I made it home, all in one piece, embracing all my totality.