In familiar territory

I know my surroundings. I can walk around my house in complete darkness and maybe once every three or four months I might stub my toe on something. My house does not have to be completely picked up. There can be a bag here or a project there on the floor and I will be able to walk completely around it, or over it, as the case may be. It’s not that I can see in the dark, it’s that I know my surroundings that well. I’ve been able to do that for as long as I can remember, even when I wasn’t the only one leaving stuff on the floor. I have a pretty good spacial sense that way.

It’s similar with my car. I know my car. I know how it feels. I know how it sounds. I know how it accelerates and breaks and turns. I know exactly what it can and cannot do.

If I’m some place that isn’t familiar, or driving some other car, it’s a completely different story. This has been brought to my attention in both cases recently. Even if I know the floor plan of the building and where I am at in relation to that plan, if it is not a place I spend a lot of time in, I’m completely frozen in the dark. I can’t move without turning on the light because I know I’ll walk into a wall or something. I recently was some place like that and I ended up having to just stand against a wall while the person I was with went to turn on the light.42D

I’ve also been driving a car that is not my own recently. The fuel system on my car started to go out on Friday. I could tell just from the feel of it that something wasn’t right with it, even before it stalled on my way home from work. Rather than going home I decided to see if it could make it all the way to the mechanic’s. He decided it wasn’t safe to drive and gave me a loaner car for the weekend till he could have more time to look at my car on Monday. I know how to drive a car. I actually think of myself as quite good at it, but this isn’t a car I’m familiar with. I imagine it’s like getting a brand new dance partner. You both know the steps, but it takes some time to get them in sync with each other.

Extending this to be a metaphor for life, my life right now is very familiar to me. I know where everything is. I know how it reacts when I do different things. I understand its speed and breaks. I know where the turns are. I know the floor plan. I know where there might be obstacles I’d have to go around or over. This life works for me.

But soon I’ll be frozen in the dark again. I’m packing up everything and moving to a completely different life. I’m not going to know how it handles. I’m not going to know where the walls are. I’m sure I’ll run into them once or twice. I won’t know where the light switches are, and there won’t exactly be someone there who can go turn the lights on for me while I stand against the wall.

And while I’m starting to feel disconnected from my familiar territory, it still does not quite seem real that I’ll be leaving it. I’m sure that within a year I’ll have a good grasp on where things are in the new place and I’ll stop stubbing my toe eventually. I guess this is how we grow.

My friend Elena had this taped to her closet door when we were roommates once:

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have, and we take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen – there will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will be taught to fly.

I’m at the edge. It will be exciting to see what’s next.