David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

life

Brush with high-speed blowout leaves me thinking about death

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The technician looked at me as though he had seen a ghost.

“You almost got yourself killed,” he said quietly.

I was almost back to my suburb Friday evening when I had a blowout on I-20 east of Birmingham. I was going faster than the law prefers when I heard a sudden noise that I find hard to describe. That noise immediately turned into a loud rumble. The car was hard to control. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but once I regained full control, I was on the exit to my neighborhood.

My regular car repair place was already closed, so I pulled into the Walmart auto center. An hour later, I was facing the technician who had pulled the tire off the car. He wanted to show me the hole in my tire — and he wanted to know how I had avoided losing control and killing myself.

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If you’ve gotten on the wrong bus, nothing changes until you get off

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Getting where you want to go in life can be complicated. We’re all making this up as we go along. Other people give us advice. Many act as though they know what they’re doing. But even if you’re sure you know what you want — which can change along the way — how do you know which route will get you there?

So you choose a place where you want to go and then you come up with a plan to get there. Years ago, I heard a pastor talk about this in terms of navigating the bus system in an unfamiliar city. I was reminded of this today when Seth Godin used the same metaphor.

Let’s say you’ve chosen a route and gotten onto a bus. You’ve paid a price to be there. You’ve left the place where you were. You’ve settled in for a comfortable ride. And as the bus starts moving forward, you slowly realize this bus isn’t taking you where you wanted to go. What do you do about it?

Most of us stay on that bus. After all, we chose to get on. We don’t want to admit we were wrong. We already have an investment in wherever this bus is going. So we keep going in the wrong direction — because we forget that nothing is going to change until we get off this bus.

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Nature’s renewal and growth boost my hope for my own life each year

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Four months ago, this leaf didn’t exist. The tree in my back yard on which it grows looked dead. There were no signs of life there. But this evening, it’s vibrant and lush — green and beautiful and full of life.

For many generations, human beings were directly connected to the cycles of nature. Their lives changed depending on the season. Their understanding of the seasons was crucial to their survival. They learned to plant in the spring, work fields in the summer, to harvest in the fall, and to protect themselves in the winter.

Modern humans are shielded from the cycles of nature. We have temperature-controlled homes and offices. We have pretty much the same food year-round, even if we don’t quite understand how that happens. My life in the summer isn’t much different from my life in the winter. Yours probably isn’t much different, either.

Reconnecting with the cycles of nature — and understanding what they teach me about myself and about this life — has been one of the most important parts of the last decade or so for me. And watching this leaf and all the other growing greenery in my back yard has me thinking this evening about that lesson once more.

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