For someone who gets car sick, I sure do love spending a lot of time in cars. There’s something about speeding down the highway, the windows down, the music blaring, that just seems to sooth my soul.
It’s almost like that scene in Perks of Being a Wallflower, where the music plays in the background as the group of friends travels down the road, lights blurring past with a since of nostalgia, love, and hope.
But the thing is, it’s not just the car. It can’t just be the car. In reality, a car is nothing more than a moving box. That’s not special. More often than not, it’s the people within the car.
It’s like when you were a kid, and you would build a fort. And within the walls of those blankets and pillows was an entire world that transformed in front of your eyes.
We all know that the best car trips are the ones where you can look out the window and in the next second look over and see someone you love—best friend or significant other—and feel, in that moment, like nothing could possibly ever go wrong again.
These are the moments where you can sing at the top of your lungs. Where you laugh until your sides hurt and your eyes blur with tears. Where you can park the car in a park or abandoned lot and just sit. There may be silence that fills the air while you just breathe.
As the air leaves your lungs and enters theirs, the details of the world are finite and inconsequential. Maybe you’ll talk. These talks will go from crushes to the future in a matter of syllables. You’ll share your fears. Your passions. Your dreams. The space in that car will become so packed with your thoughts that you’ll have to roll down the windows to make room for more.
Whomever is in that car with you will know. They’ll know these moments are precious and rare. They’ll know, just as you know, that once the doors of that car open to the world, the universe you existed in for that brief moment in time will cease to be. But that’s okay.
Because in the end, it didn’t need to be permanent. It shouldn’t be permanent. The things that last forever are seldom as wonderful as the things you can only grasp for a short period of time.
So here’s to the wind blown hair, the loud music, the worn out voices from talking into the wee hours of the morning. Here’s to the cars. And the best rides of our lives.
