The Car in the Driveway

This week — The Car in the Driveway.

You pull in and you put it in park and you turn the engine off.

And then you don't get out.

The engine ticks a while as it cools. The dash lights fade down one at a time. Somewhere in the house a lamp is on, and you can see somebody moving past the window — the shape of them, carrying something from one room to another.

And you sit there.

Not doing anything. Not on your phone, necessarily. Just sitting, hands still on the wheel or fallen into your lap, in a car that isn't going anywhere.

Two minutes. Sometimes ten.

And if somebody came out and knocked on the glass and asked what you were doing, you'd have no answer.

You'd say — nothing. I'm coming.

Which is true, and which explains nothing at all.

Here's what's happening in that car.

Behind you is the part of your life where you were needed all day by people who had every right to need you. In front of you is the part where you'll be needed again, starting the second that door opens.

And this — this small dark box on a driveway, going nowhere — is the only place today where nobody wants anything from you.

There was a stretch of years where I'd get to work fifteen minutes early on purpose.

Not to get a head start. I'd sit in the lot. Radio off. Watching people walk in.

And when I finally understood what I was doing, it embarrassed me — because it looked like dread, and I didn't want it to be dread.

It wasn't dread. It was the only quiet I'd get until the drive home.

So let me say the part I think a lot of us have backward.

You're not tired from your work.

Most of you like your work. Some of you are exceptional at it, and it's given you things, and you wouldn't trade it.

You're tired from being reachable.

Eleven hours of it. Every question routed to you because you're the one who answers. That small constant awareness running underneath everything else — that somebody could need you at any moment, and you would say yes.

And we don't stop, because stopping has to be justified.

We don't rest, because rest is what you do after — and there is no after, there's only the next thing.

We don't say we're tired, because saying it out loud means somebody would have to do something about it, and there's nobody to do anything about it.

We take the ten minutes by accident, in a driveway, in the dark. And then we get out of the car and act like it didn't happen.

So let me ask you something.

Where's your driveway?

It might not be a car. It might be the long way home. It might be a shower that went eleven minutes longer than it needed to.

It might be the parking lot of a store you did not need one single thing from.

Everybody's got one. Everybody's found some small unwatched place to put themselves back together before the next door opens.

Take a moment and find yours.

Take a moment and stop calling it wasting time.

Take a moment and let it be what it is.

And that's all this is, right here. Another one of those.

Nobody's going to knock on the glass. Nobody's waiting on you for the next few minutes.

So get comfortable enough that your body stops asking you for things.

Let it get quiet.

Now close your eyes.

Breathe in.

And let it go.

One more. In.

And all the way out.

Now — put yourself in that car.

Engine off. Ticking as it cools.

Light on in the house. Somebody moving past a window.

And you, not going anywhere.

Nobody knows where you are for the next few minutes.

Feel what your hands do when nothing needs holding.

You've been calling this a bad habit.

Nobody ever told you that you could just stop.

So you found a way to do it that didn't require permission.

Stay here a minute.

Take one more breath.

Open your eyes when you're ready.

The house will still be there.

It always was.