A Driver, My Soul and a Car - Parable

A Driver, My Soul and a Car

This is the body I have. This body, this vehicle which looks to me like a cherry ’65 Buick Riviera convertible, comes equipped in this place with a driver. The driver is an odd character with many heads, endless opinions and “endless –squared” stories. He does not consistently display any one trait; not kindness, mean-spiritedness, sweetness, wisdom or foolishness. The many-headed driver is merely insane. Not in an overt manner, but insane nonetheless. He can display any trait at any given moment and then change to its opposite in the blink of an eye if another head has the desire to be heard.

My soul inhabits the same vehicle. It is soft, white, radiant, full of childlike joy and sage-like wisdom. It is an explorer above all else, seeking experience for the experience sake - and it has had a lot of it. It happily agreed to climb into this car with the lunatic. My soul, apparently, knows no fear. It understands that in the end, the lunatic in the drivers’ seat is unable to hurt it. And to be sure, the driver is entertaining as hell , even charming usually, a non-stop talker. My soul listens with an amused half-smile as the heads all take their turns telling noisy stories above the rushing wind of the convertible about the scenery outside, about their lives, opinions, fantasies and especially complaints.

My soul often thinks to itself, “What an interesting character, this driver. He knows relatively little, but speaks incessantly. However,” my soul smiles, “sometimes we agree. And I would never have seen so much lonely highway, so many thunder and lightning storms, great canyons, vast oceans and white-tipped mountains without him. Or... them.” And then he chuckles.

Days, months and years speed by with my soul as the passenger. On angry days the many-headed
driver challenges my soul to a dual of sorts. He’ll very surreptitiously reach his left hand into the drivers’ side door pocket and bring out a bottle. He sneaks a sip, then two. My soul will often pretend he doesn’t see the driver sipping an intoxicant as they wildly barrel down the lonely desert highway. But he does see it. In the early days of the journey the driver could actually fool my soul. But my soul now knows him so well that very little the driver does can get past him.

What’s in the bottle, you ask? It can be any number of things. Sugar, overeating and sex are among the drivers’ favorites, although rage and music have had their days. Sometimes what the driver drinks is wholesome enough. But in the quantities he wants to consume, they become intoxicating.

When the intoxication starts, the lunatic may stop on his own. If it surfaces through the haze, his concern is not for his passenger, but for himself. After all, he can be injured or killed. He is not immortal, as my soul is. But at other times he turns to my soul and, slurring his words in an obnoxious challenge, he tells my soul that they are unloved and alone in an impossible land. He says the world is a scary, dangerous place. And then he’ll tell how he came to those conclusions from the vast experience of his many heads. Oh, the stories he tells as long as my soul is there to listen!

At some point my soul has a decision to make; one of three choices. He can allow the lunatic to continue to drive, either listening intently to his dark pontifications, or try to ignore him as he gets louder and louder, or he can move into the drivers’ seat. It is entirely within his power to do so. He just melts over and gently displaces the sullen, frightened, intoxicated driver. He takes the wheel, decreases the speed of the car and turns off the radio while the angry, smelly tour guide sleeps his fear off in the passenger seat. This has been happening for many, many years.

Over the years, however, a subtle change has taken place in the driver. There are fewer heads. My soul was surprised to see this phenomenon when it first occurred, but one morning there were simply fewer. Speeding down the highway in the morning cactus bloom, my soul was hesitant to ask, but it
said, “Mr. Driver,” he’s so respectful, my soul, “there seem to be fewer of you this morning.”

The driver just nodded so my soul continued. “As you so often put it…what gives?”  

My soul watched the driver shrink a little in his seat, and a couple heads briefly reappeared, seemingly with more stories to tell, and then inexplicably sunk away again. Shrugging, he said, “I guess I just don’t have that much to say right now.”

And then…silence. More than silence, it was stillness. The wind rushing by seemed to sing the songs of springtime swallows and the desert blooms cheered their fragrant souls into the open air under a sky so fair and grand and blue that it defies appropriate description. My soul smiled. The driver too allowed a smile – an amused half smile – to come across his lips. And to his surprise, there was only one pair of them.

With a sense and expression of peace that he had borrowed, however briefly, from his passenger, the driver turned to my soul and asked for the first time, “So, tell me about you.”   

This was the beginning of all growth.

--Eric Marley

April 2015