Long Walks On Leafy Streets

3/15/2015 Zilker Park, Austin, TX
Last night I happened to drive around Northwest DC near Chevy Chase circle. I was returning the zipcar Prius that I had rented for a day. The only Prius available was in that area near Friendship Heights, about 4 miles from our home. Nicole was not happy with my spending so much effort just to rent a Prius, but the fact is that it makes me far happier to know that I had burnt a gallon less of gasoline with its resultant emissions. We drove for over a 100 miles yesterday, picking up my parents and doing shopping. Most of the other zipcars would have burnt at least a gallon more. Even the other hybrids they have would have burnt at least half a gallon more. I don’t know if the company is buying fewer hybrids but before it was bought out by Avis it used to be much easier to find the Prii.

Anyway it was a very pleasant evening and I didn’t mind the chance to drive. I must say I love driving very much, in all kinds of conditions. Hopefully we’d be able to get a car that has a small impact on the environment. For now I just enjoy it whenever I get the chance. After a day of driving around with family and running around in crowded stores it was nice to have a moment of quiet solitude. Especially because I was not feeling 100 percent. The regular meditation is helping me maintain a calm state of mind even when it is hectic but when the body is ill it becomes more difficult. Nevertheless I must say I was pleasantly surprised by how well I was able to manage all my activities even when the body and mind were feeling weaker. There truly is a part of us, what some call the spirit, which is beyond both the body and the mind.

Coming back to the driving. By the time I started from home it was around 11. The air was 56 degrees, but it felt much warmer due to the very cold weather we have been experiencing lately. Because the car had less than a quarter tank of fuel, I needed to fill it up before returning. I drove north on Connecticut Avenue from military road looking for gas stations. The traffic was light at this hour and the road was dark. Tchaikovsky’s symphony number seven was playing on WETA. The solemn and sublime notes seemed a good setting for the elegant houses on this tree-lined stretch of the Avenue. I found myself, for a moment, feeling really happy and satisfied with life. The world and the life on this earth were wonderful.

Yet very soon I started to think about all the less affluent parts of the city where life is not so wonderful. How does one live and enjoy what is, in and of itself, quite blameless and beautiful without feeling guilty? The answer also came quickly. Many of us think that we deserve to live such a life, and at the same time either explicitly or implicitly think that some others do not. That somehow those who could not attain certain status in life did so because they just didn’t try. Even worse, that some people by their nature are simply inferior and less human, even. During the past US elections I came across this line in an article about inequality in America. “I asked my Republican neighbor, don’t you want the children of the man who mows your lawn to have a better life? He told me, `they will mow the lawn of my children.’ “ Why, in my own community when I was growing up in India we didn’t think too much about the poor people. I remember when I was very young there used to be a group of “untouchables” living in a nearby neighborhood. We didn’t venture there that much. The conditions in which they lived were filthy and miserable. Somehow we were led to believe that is just how things were. Later in my teenage years I started questioning whether indeed things needed to be that way. But extrapolating from that experience it is not hard to see why the rich are able to enjoy their lifestyle without worrying too much. In general all the problems we are having in the US today, starting with the violence and all the way up to the dysfunction in the Congress especially the so called tea party caucus, is really arising from people living in their own small worlds both physically and mentally. I have no doubt the situation would improve ss people mature spiritually and learn more about their fellow men.

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