Observations on Driving Patters/The Circle(s) of Life

(Keep reading and stick with this one, I promise that it has a real point and resolves itself toward the end)

Every few weeks or so, a seemingly unimpactful five or six word sentence has a profound effect on the way that I think.

I was riding in my car today in San Marcos with my good friend Sean. As we approached a traffic light; Sean made the following comment: “You have really weird driving patterns”. I guess I do, in fact, I definitely do. However, if this is to have any real reason or point, I need to put it in context.

We had just finished with “Bobcat Build”…an amazing and huge community service project at Texas State involving something like 1,000 students and a huge orchestrated effort to send the students to various projects around the modestly sized community. Sean and I worked with the CRU group. Our project was painting the interior of a building that is home to an after school program for at risk youth. There were between 30 and 35 of us so the job went fast and we ended up playing Dodgeball as the paint was drying. Free hot dogs (a food product that will be the subject of a future entry on how some cultures tend to view food in certain other cultures as disgusting) were being served at the Bobcat Stadium we returned to the meeting site at the Bobcat Village apartments. It was along the route between there and the stadium that Sean made his (mostly likely unintentionally) profound comment.

I guess some familiarity with the urban geography of San Marcos is needed to understand, well, the urban geography in San Marcos. Essentially, the route I took to the stadium was a little longer, and completed a circle, which prompted Sean to make the comment. He’s an observant guy, he observed that I’ve often driven “in circles”, so to speak. I always enter the apartment complex where he lives though one entrance and I always leave though the other, which creates a circuitous route. I plan almost all of my road trips in a similar way, something I mentioned to Sean in acknowledgement that his observation was correct. My Spring Break trip included a long road trip which created a very well rounded circle on the map spanning 4 states and 2 Canadian provinces. I tend to follow this “weird” pattern whether I’m driving across international borders or simply visiting a friend’s apartment. When I’m navigating for a friend as they drive, and they miss a turn, my most frequently offered solution is to “circle the block”…I would rather do that then try to turn around and go back the way I came. One thing I despise on a trip is taking the same route twice when a different route (that’s not too much of a detour) can be taken on the return leg of the journey. I occasionally, just for whatever reason, drive though the west gate of my apartment complex even though my building is located right next to the east gate and it’s (no exaggeration here) a one mile drive around the circumference of the complex. I don’t follow this route nearly as often, because it’s ridiculous, but the fact that I’ve even gone this far a couple of times is telling that this really is persistent pattern. Essentially, the basic conclusion is that I like driving in circles.

The operative word in the previous sentence is “basic”. About 30 minutes later I was walking with Sean and other members of our group. Then I stopped. What he said had revealed something very precise and very important about myself that I had thought about at times, but had never truly realized the scope of how it governs my actions. I like resolution. This preference for resolution affects a holistic range of the decisions that I make. I used to state that I like finishing things, and that is true, I like when something, a task I have, or a bad song on the radio, is done. Today I realized that is a small part of my personality in comparison to the tenet that acts as an umbrella shading many aspects of my actions, decisions and personality. I like resolution. I drive in circles because, in a purely geographical sense, circles resolve. I like albums that can best be described as great albums, not merely as a collection of good songs, because the different tracks tie together and the album resolves at the end (for a good example of this, listen to album entitled “Progress” by the RX Bandits). I enjoy the sound of jazz but cannot pay too much attention to it or I become quickly frustrated at the lack of resolution. I, for the most part, dislike arguments but I love when they end in a peaceful resolution of acceptance of each side’s mutual right to exist and have opinions. I love the moment in a sporting event when the game clock reaches zero and a clear winner is determined. No more is this resolution so sharp than in the climactic goal in sudden death overtime of a playoff hockey game…which happens to be my favorite thing in sports…and not coincidentally so. I love finishing projects, so much so that the desire to finish alone motivates me even when it is hard to find enjoyment in any aspect of the processes involved in the project. My desire to accomplish goals, to finish what I start, is often powerful enough to override my often extreme lack of initiative in starting toward those goals.

It’s clear to me at least that a few conventionally formed words linked together in a conventional phrase can have a very unconventional impact. I learn so much from just random conversations about anything. I learn so much from people, just talking to people, about anything. I would love nothing more than to just spend a week in a coffee shop in Central Austin with a few of my best friends talking about anything that comes to mind. As long as we sit in a circle, return from the shop a different way than we came, and, most importantly, all of our conversations resolve at some point.

- Jordan