Rusted Vehicles

Today, our local tour began with Rusted Ford Trucks on the side of the road. I recognized two or three of my grandfather's 1940s and 1950s trucks. I recognized my Aunt Jenny's 1949 Ford sedan. All the vehicles completely rusted--rather like my body.

My sweetie and i looked at the new cars on the road and the rental Kia we are driving. In 20 or 50 or 70 years, they will look so old-fashioned, so rusty, so impossible to imagine as new. Just as children and young people cannot imagine that we were ever their age. They are young, and we are old. Thus has it ever been.

My dear Ford Ranger truck--the one i use to haul manure, wood chips, mulch, mulch hay, and dozens of plants--even it will, one of these days, rust in peace.

Car-Identification

We don't identify with our cars--at least most of us don't. Oh, we may identify with driving a certain model of car. "I drive a Prius." Already that speaks volumes about my personality. My sister dries a Jaguar, which tells you about her.

Station wagon, van, mini-Cooper, truck. Vokswagen, Chevy, BMW. But while we are driving our alter-egos on the road, we don't mistake our car for our self. The car does our bidding--faster, slower, turning, right, turning left, passing, stopping.

What if we felt the same way about the vehicles we seem to inhabit--our bodies? What if we looked out the windows of our body--our 2 eyes--and saw? Simply saw? Simply looked at the landscape passing by and realized that we are just a passenger in this body-vehicle? It affords me great mobility, but the body is not what i am, and certainly not who i am.

How silly to say, "I am my Prius." "I am my pick-up truck." Perhaps it's equally foolish to identify with our bodies--thin or fat, big or small, well or sick.

What if the body is simply a vehicle.