What should I write? Perhaps, about what goes on in my head; and to begin with, what is going on in it now.
I went to the car rental agency at Split airport to pick up the car I had reserved. The lady at the counter looked at my confirmation, prepared some papers, and handed me a key. It was the key to a Chevrolet Spark, which is a very small car. I had asked for a Volkswagen Polo. She said she could not give me the Polo because it could not be made ready in time. And it was Saturday evening, so there was nothing that could be done about it. The Spark was smaller, she admitted. But not as small as a Tata Nano, she said, to reassure me.
We squeezed our bags and ourselves into the car and took off. The car did not have much power. It smelled a bit of petrol or something. As I drove the car around the next day, I was not happy. I thought the woman had taken advantage of me by forcing a smaller car on me—though she said it was in the same category as the Polo and hence the same price. Perhaps I should have been firm with her and insisted I wanted a bigger car. Maybe I should have asked her to show me some paper to prove the Spark and Polo were in the same category, though that would have suggested that I doubted her honesty, and I do not like to make people feel that I am doubting them.
Each time the car strained to climb, and every time it smelled, I was unhappy. Maybe I should have demanded that she give me a bigger car or else I would not take any. Then she may have given me a bigger car from a higher category at no extra cost. The story in my head was about who had got the better of whom in the struggle between the woman and me. It was a story of my being taken for a ride by her.
While I was pressing the accelerator hard to climb a hill on the way from Trogir to Dubrovnik, I heard the little car speak to me. I am small, it said, but I work hard and do not let you down. I am taking you wherever you want to go. I now heard another story of my being taken for a ride! But this was not a story of doubting another, but a story of appreciating another—even if it was only a little car!
We all go through life weaving events into stories in our heads.
A few days before that, while I was sailing in a sightseeing boat in the Danube in Budapest, a haiku had formed in my head, and it came back to me again. It was:
Life has taken me for a ride,
But, by God, I have enjoyed it.
(Then I thought, should I say ‘but’ or ‘and’?)
Why must I say ‘but’? What is bad about ‘being taken for a ride’? Is it the passivity in ‘I’ when I am being taken for a ride that is bad? Or is it that someone may be getting the better of ‘me’ that is bad about ‘being taken for a ride’?
Events happen in life. I sail into them. They are never generated solely by any individual will. Wills interact with others’ wills, and also with forces and events beyond any human will. Therefore living is like being taken for a ride through events.
As events happen, I interpret them and weave them into a story about my life. The story could be one of fear and persecution. Or it could be a story of wonder and appreciation. I have a choice about which story I want to write in my head. That is one choice I have, even if I do not have a choice about what events there will be in my life.
Life goes on, and will go on, even if I were not there. How I give shape to the ‘I’ within that life is a matter of choice. A choice which becomes known, and therefore can be exercised, only when I get outside the chatter of stories that clamor for attention within my mind—some that dominate, and others that are very quiet, and require that I look for them and then listen to them.
That is the benefit of asking myself what I should write about, and looking inside for the stories in my head.