Someone told me once that people do their best thinking in the shower.
This is not true for me. I do my best thinking driving.
I spend about 2 hours in my car every day driving to and from work, and I find my mind wondering a lot. About anything. About everything.
Sometimes I jam out to the radio. Other times I listen to NPR (very old-person of me). Sometimes I cry. (I read a study once that women cry an average of 24 times a year, and men 9 times a year - the study said most of them did their crying while driving alone in their car.) Sometimes I sit in silence and think.
As a kid, my family used to drive when we took trips. We didn't fly. We drove. We drove many trips of 8 hours or more. I remember sitting in the backseat on those trips, driving down desolate highways, and watching the cars that would zip by us going the opposite direction. And I would wonder what the lives of the people in those other cars were like. Where were they going? Was this a normal drive for them or were they on a trip like us? Did they ever wonder the same thing about me - the other car on the road? Did they wonder about my life, too?
I still have similar thoughts. In the middle of rush hour traffic, I now wonder what the people in the cars around me are thinking, what they are listening to on the radio. I wonder what all these other people are going to do when they get home.
If I take a route that goes through downtown, I look at the lights that are still on in the office buildings, and I wonder what those people are doing - how much longer they will be there, that one lonely cube of light in a building of darkness. What are those people's lives like?
I have many different routes that I take to and from work. On one route, I pass a tiny building with a sign that reads: "Jewelry Repair - Open 24 Hours" and I always wonder who would need to bring their jewelry in for repairs in the dead of night. What do those customers look like? I bet those are always interesting cases.
I've remembered a time in the third grade, when I made fun of a boy because he had ear wax literally coming out of his ears, and how hurt he looked. And how, when he came to school the next day, his ears were clean. And I think about how he probably went home that day and told his mom a girl had made fun of him, and how she probably helped him clean his ears. And how she probably thought I was a mean girl. I felt so guilty and ashamed that next day. I wonder if he remembers it, too.
I've thought about how I feel I have lived three or four different lives before I've even turned 30. And I wonder if everyone feels this way.
I've thought a lot about how to be a better person.
I've thought about all the things I wanted to write, but I haven't.
