My car has much to teach me. Last Sunday on Hwy 100, I was shifting up into 5th gear. So I thought.
The clutch had other plans.
My good red Saturn and I coasted to the side of the road. Even though my heart was racing and adrenaline pumping, I did have a sense that I was okay. I’m grateful for that. I managed to dial friends for help, and felt a calm come over me as they kindly helped me out. Even the state patrol officer who stopped was compassionate about putting a big orange check mark on my back window to mean “this one’s been checked on.”
Now that the new clutch is in and working well, I’ve been thinking about how it works. I’m no expert, but I do know that it’s got to go in for any shifting to happen. Since I’m in the “shifting” business, and I’m wired for metaphor, I started wondering.
What needs to disengage before you can get in gear with life? Usually people think of “getting your life in gear,” but I think life is actually tooling along perfectly fine and it is up to us to work the clutch AND shift as needed. If these two steps don’t work in tandem, we just get grinding gears or no real movement at all.
What do you think? When making a change for the better, do you find you need to “disengage” some old habit or pattern to free up the system for something new?
At any rate, I’m happy to have new awareness of how shifting works… and to be back on the road!
