Headlights on the Highway

I grew up in the country, where nighttime is dark. Pitch black. When driving to see my friends I’d often miss the roads they lived on and have to turn around. A couple years ago I was driving home for the holidays and turned on a gravel road. It was a little foggy and hard to see. I panicked. I started thinking about what would happen if I got lost or a car came around the bend too quickly and then I got mad at myself for getting so upset. These were the road I learned to drive on at 16. What was the problem? The problem was that I had been living in Philadelphia for several years at this point and though I never really noticed, Philly is never dark. Even in the middle of the night there are streetlights and headlights and people out and about. Little by little, without realizing it, I had become afraid of the dark. 

This moment came back to me while I was driving to Virginia this weekend and I realized it wasn’t the dark that I had come to fear but the unknown that lives in it. Driving wasn’t the only time I had come across this fear. I moved to Philly when I was 20. I had no job, no apartment, no significant other, so when a job offer came up it didn’t matter that I had never been to Philadelphia before, I left. I packed up and found an apartment and when that job ended I found another one and I moved further into the city. Over the past 4 and a half years I got comfortable. I made friends, I started dating, I found a full time job, I found a church community that I love and now when I make a decision to change, I have something to lose. 

While I was running through all of this in my head, someone cut me off on the road. My first instinct was to look at their license plate for two reasons. 1. Once as a kid, we were in the car and someone threw a fire cracker out their window blowing open our tire. My father (aka Superman) not only managed to keep the car on the road and all of us safe, but also managed to look behind him and get the guy’s license plate number. Like I said, Superman. Now every time I’m in a potential dangerous situation I try to memorize the person’s license plate number, just in case. 2. Someone made a comment a couple months ago that driving in Philly would be much safer if they didn’t let people from Jersey in, so I’ve been conducting an experiment where every time someone cuts me off I look to see if they’re from Jersey. I apologize if that’s where you’re from but 99% of the time, they are, so…. Anyway, I looked at this car and it was a Virginia plate, then I looked at the rest of the cars around me, they were all Virginia plates. I was in Virginia. I had passed through two states without noticing. Furthermore, I had made it to my destination without knowing where I was going beforehand. I looked in my rearview mirror; it was pitch black. I looked ahead of me and could only see as far as my headlights and I remembered a quote I once heard. “You may only be able to see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” It didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to get there; I made it by moving forward. 

So maybe I’m going to give up on trying to have the next 5 years of my life planned, or the next two, or next week. Maybe instead I’ll focus on what I can do today to get me closer to where I want to be and then worry about tomorrow. The rest of it will fall into place as it comes and if as I’m traveling I realize I’m not going the right way, I’ll turn around and wait for the GPS to recalculate. Just keep moving forward. 

On a side note, if you’re feeling a little lost, I highly suggest taking a road trip to see old friends. Roll down the windows and spend the first hour in the silence with your thoughts. Play your favorite songs and sing at the top of your lungs. Go and see the people who loved you before you were your best self. Go see the people who hug you so hard that your body gets slammed against the car door. Go see the people who tell you 100 times in 4 hours how glad they are that you’re there. Meet their current friends. Meet the lovely people who have welcomed your friends with love in their hearts. Then when you’re ready, go home. Enjoy the feeling of knowing where you’re going and as you get close notice how the city looks the same, yet slightly different. Just keeping moving forward.