vanity plates

and other puzzles

you’re on the freeway in the midst of rush hour. nothing is moving, you might as well put the car in park. your attention drifts to the cars that surround you. 

the same old traffic thoughts glaze across your brain:
where are we all going? why isn’t this a two tier freeway? what if roads were giant conveyor belts? I’d love to have a conveyor belt commute. 

your eyes land on the back of some sort of grey sedan. nothing about it is noteworthy, except for the cryptic combo of letters and numbers on the license plate. 

suddenly your entire focus zeroes in to decode this assemblage. 

we’ve all seen them: DNER41 or TYNXT even FRSHH20

a vanity plate! 

I love vanity plates. not because I get a kick out of puns or words written in a clever way, but because they’re a flag post sitting in the landscape of mundanity. their existence creates a portal to absolute connection with the now. they even provide an opportunity to practice non-reactivity.

personally, I’ve always had a tricky time figuring them out. but when I’m making the effort, my whole mind is putting the pieces together. in an instant I become the protagonist thief in a heist movie. with the help of futuristic technology, I unscramble the password required to open the door of a bank vault. 

and just like magic, the vanity plates drop their mystery and it all makes sense:

DINNER FOR ONE, THANK YOU NEXT, FRESH WATER

little puzzles pop up all the time - they may represent something big big or practically insignificant. 

when conundrums involve us personally, it becomes vital that we practice
non-reactivity. if not, we become uncomfortable when emotions come into play. all of the sudden our heist movie stalls. hands shake over the keyboard, eyes dart back and forth. we lose focus on the big picture.

we wonder: will the whole plan fall apart!!! ??

then, the mind attaches to emotions. enter the narrative: if I can’t figure out the answer to this, it just confirms my suspicions that nobody really likes me. it’s been clear this whole time that my contributions are too small to matter! why didn’t my parents force me to stick to piano lessons!!! then things would be different. that was a crucial turning point for me. I wish I’d stuck to those group lessons. I’d have better social skills AND I’d actually know an instrument. 

okay, but who is that storyline helping? absolutely no one. who brought up piano? you did!!

these mind/emotion cycles happen all the time, both in big and small ways. 

on Monday, my boyfriend and I woke up at 4:30am, stood in line for 5 hours and got our first vaccine dose. we were so excited as we drove home. trying to shake our shock, we repeated wow wow wow. nothing could touch my mood.

later that day I took my Dad to get his second vaccine dose. our time together was wonderful. I was loopy from exhaustion but so happy. we drank coffee outside his apartment and talked for hours. he fed croissant flakes to my dog when I wasn’t looking. I enjoyed every moment.

just before I left my parents place, my mom came out of the bedroom and revealed that she hadn’t been feeling well for at least 3 days. immediately my mind shifted. I needed answers, like why I wasn’t told sooner and how serious might this be? I left without any satisfactory answers.

I drove home from my parents place in a daze. I was sleepy, confused and hurt that I wasn’t informed, for many reasons. dozens of questions and theories circled my mind, waiting to close in. past the point of exhaustion, I didn’t have the ability to step back from my thoughts. at home, I told my boyfriend I needed to be alone and cried.

crying alone wasn’t helping, so I cried next to my boyfriend. his mind clear of emotional ghosts, he helped me talk through the situation with an objective perspective. he approached my story with logic, systematically sorting through the many layers weighing me down.

while the puzzle wasn’t all solved by morning, I had at least gained some distance from the emotions that clouded my logic. 

Monday night, I couldn’t sense up from down. now I’m able to see what occurred from a perspective of non attachment. I had taken things personally, when it wasn’t really about me. I had allowed unknown variables to move me into a place of fear.

the emotions I wove into the situation weren’t helping me figure things out. in fact, the more that I indulged them, the harder everything felt. very quickly, the emotions held control.

this is the process I fell into:

the answer isn’t to turn your emotions off, it’s more like:

can you see them for what they are? 

can you determine if they’re helping you?

are they at scale with the situation or have they become bigger than the puzzle at hand?

when you’re able to ask these questions, you practice non attachment and non reactivity. the process looks more like this:

remember our lovely vanity plates.

do you attach emotional weight to their cryptic messages? 
or do you look at that puzzle with impersonal curiosity, treating it as a mental exercise?

maybe you don’t crack the code, but you drive off into the sunset anyway.

until next time,
James