"I don't want to be a passenger in my own life."

Diane Ackerman

I read this quote on a blog called Sunday Scribblings, where they suggest different themes to write about. That day, I went down to the public library, two blocks from where I work, and checked out Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses. But I'm still lingering around the quote and trying to figure out just how I feel about it. Where I find myself within it. Whether or not I am a passenger in my life, exactly what that means, and whether or not I want to be a passenger or driver. When it comes to relationships, I would sometimes opt to be a passenger, to not have to put all the thinking and considering into it, to be carried along emotionally every now and then. Supported.

To be very literal about it, I am always the driver in my life. On the rare occasions in my life that I find myself in the passenger seat of someone else's car, I am always amazed at how much more I take in of the landscape around me. I drive forty five minutes to work every day and when I take the same route, sitting in the passenger seat, there are so many small details I miss otherwise....my eyes on the yellow lines or the brake lights in front of me. I see children interacting, nests in the trees, the details in the stalks of harvested corn, tracks in winter snow. I have to imagine when we relinquish the need for constent (or chronic) control in our lives, when we pass the keys to someone we trust, we find ourselves better able to absorb the world around us. To maybe take a deeper breath in our respite from responsibility.

I understand the figurative message of the quote. I don't always feel like I'm on the track I'd like to be on. I think about the time I've spent out west, in the mountains of Oregon with EarthFirst, digging trenches to keep dozers away, building tri-pods out of fallen trees to keep the 'copters from landing, staying up in two hour shifts with a campfire to keep watch through the night for the sake of old growth and habitats. I think about the plant across the lake from Burlington in New York taking their two week test run of burning tires for fuel. During this test run they tried operating the plant with 1 ton of tire derived fuel. They learned it would take 3 tons of tire derived fuel to power the plant on a regular basis. Turns out, within less than a week's time, the emmissions were too high. They'd have to burn too many tires to keep the plant running and it just won't fly. But, like so many concerned folks, I did nothing. Just tuned in to VPR on my way to work and on my way home, daydreaming of being on the other side of the water, rallying folks to chain ourselves to the gates to keep the operation from happening at all. But god(dess) forbid the bills don't get paid.

So, yes, I understand the quote. I relate to the quote. But I think the words are conditional. I think they can afford to bend and stretch with the circumstance.