The freshly repaved main route north of downtown Grand Rapids still awaits its painted centerline and bike lane markings. The pedestrian crossing is newly painted and a traffic island added now to the crossing has its eye-catching yellow warning paint to attract drivers’ attention. But peering into the windows of the passing cars leaving the distant stoplight behind, it is easy to imagine the various states of mind, based on one’s own driving experience alone or with passengers; with audio system playing or hands-free telephone call engaged.
Likely in this stream of cars there are people with various degrees of alertness to the road surface and hazards, to weather and traffic patterns. Some may be zoned out; others super vigilant; and still others are somewhere in-between. Similarly in daily life off the road, some of us are in our own heads; others are present in the surrounding people’s lives and aware of the landscape they inhabit. In just about all cases, though, there is a sense of being in one’s own bubble behind the wheel. Yes, all the world’s problems are out there somewhere, but such headlines are “not my problem” in any personal consciousness. While operating in that bubble and behind the wheel, we assume we have full control and discretion about speed, destination, and safety in arriving where intended, as we expect. Sometimes, though, **it happens. There may be accident, seizure, unnoticed pothole or perhaps an animal jumps into the road of life. That’s when the illusion about being in control, almighty, high-powered, important and entitled cracks open. Cracks, for some people — as the aphorism goes, are the only thing that lets the light in.
In the analogy between people on the road and experiences of social life more generally, there could be similarities also in the way that assumptions or expectations make possible religious faith; something usually unseen, but trusted to be operating. Every morning the faithful go out into God’s World and have the expectation about how things should go and what everything means that they see and do, as well as for all the things that pass unseen. But some of that confident vision could just be plain-old habit; it’s a projected illusion or wishful thinking. It is not the mortal who is in charge, but instead it is a higher power at work.
Going back to the street traffic in the photo, we are in our car bubble on life’s highway. Some of us are focused on the surroundings out there, others are filled instead with private preoccupations and anxieties of our own making. Either way, though, the illusion of order (not chaos) makes possible our faith to go ahead and start the engine and merge into the stream of that day. Somehow mishaps occur relatively seldom, considering the myriad things that COULD go wrong — wrong on purpose (terrorist) or as unintended consequences after a sequence of unfortunate errors. Faith in fellow humans and in the other drivers’ experience and habits lets us go out and expect to get where we want to go. Among the religions’ faithful, having some trust in the Creator’s goodness lets the people go out and expect to know God better and better as they step out into the unknown.
The “cars on life’s road” analogy also seems to rhyme with ideas of “front stage” versus “backstage,” in which drivers go about their business imagining their bubble is a private space, rather than a fishbowl for all to observe them: combing hair, picking nose, texting or dictating replies on the go, food to nibble at, portable razor to shave, etc. One extreme in this bubble consciousness lets the person in the car proceed oblivious of those around them. The opposite extreme is a driver who is hyper-aware of the collective stream of traffic, caring about all the others sharing the road. Somewhere in the middle is a mixture of self-AND-other consciousness. By analogy to politics and social relations: some vote for their personal interests/awareness, others vote for collective or common good.
So the next time you see people tootling along in their glass and steel bubbles, remember that some illusion of being in control is allowing them to go down the road feeling more or less safe and in control. Something like these mental/emotional gymnastics also allows God-seekers to go down the road of life and mingle with the other sinners out in the world, knowing that God is in the driver’s seat; not the co-pilot. In any case, whether fetching groceries, bumping into others at work, or along the arc of spiritual growth, the way that one’s mind shifts between self-contained bubble and collective presence of mind is what makes possible the imagined agency, entitlement or authority, and forward motion through the days and decades.
