Honda Diagnosis

I discovered a method to expose how many things are on my mind, and all it takes is my car stereo.

Last night, I made a quick drive over to the grocery. Before I started the car, I turned off the radio. I often do this when I know I'm going to be making short trips because my retractable antenna doesn't fully retract anymore, and it makes an awful grinding when it tries. When the radio is on, this noise happens every time the car starts and every time I stop the engine. To try to avoid it, I'll shut off the radio.

That meant that the radio was off when I drove to school today. Ordinarily, I have NPR running all the time so the periods of silence in my car are few and far between. On this particular day, I made it two-thirds of the way to the campus before I realized the radio was still off. On a 30 minute drive, that means I spent 20 minutes in complete silence and didn't realize it.

I had filled the time with continuous and wild leaps of cognition. From the moment I started the car (if not before!) I was immersed in my own thoughts. It's a measure of how much is on my mind; ordinarily, I'm thinking only a few lingering thoughts, so I've got plenty of brainpower to devote to other more immediate things. In this case, though, I had a larger helping of issues. I suppose I should be lucky I could still maneuver my car on autopilot.

The good part is that I don't need any diagnosis to tell me what it is I'm thinking about: it's all right there on the surface. The bad news is it doesn't help anybody if I'm demonstrably lost in my own thoughts.

That's why I'm sitting here tonight, in front of my fireplace. I had planned on going to hear a recital this evening, but I eventually decided against it. Not because it was far away (though it was), or because I wanted to be home (which I did). No, I decided not to go for one reason: I was going for the wrong reason.

I'm sure that sounds all kinds of faux-dramatic, but this isn't going to be a revelation about how I'm going to recitals to avoid having to think about beating my kids when I get home. The simple truth was that I was going to attend that recital for reasons that had nothing to do with the performance. As a music major, I realized that's just not acceptable. A recital should be about the demonstration of musical preparation, not as a stepping stone for an audience member.

So, I'm at home. Sure, being in front of the fireplace on a cold, wet night isn't a terrible punishment. But my chastisement is not about having a bad time while grounded in my room; this is about me deciding that no matter what it is I'm pursuing, I need to do it without compromising principles.