I am learning to drive a stick shift.
The first time I got behind the wheel in the abandoned parking lot, I was literally shaking with fear. The shaking has not stopped in the month that I have been puttering around town stalling out, rolling backwards, and, on rare occasion, seamlessly shifting. I take deep breaths and hum to myself. Sometimes I have to have my boyfriend drive us back because I am too riled up and need to decompress.
People have fallen into two camps when I seek public support for this feat during various conversations and on social media platforms. On the one hand, they are supportive and congratulatory. They say things like,
Or they tell me a story about how hard/impossible it was for them to learn it, and good on me (thanks guys!)
On the other hand, they say things like,
"It's really not that hard."
and
"I had to learn driving from one side of the country to the other. You'll be fine. (subtext: stop being a weenie)"
The problem with this side of the argument is that it ignores what is actually making driving this car so hard. They're probably right that the mechanics of driving a stick shift are totally manageable. Anyone who can simultaneously pat their head and rub their belly should be able to get this down eventually. But that is not really my biggest stumbling block. It is my FEAR of driving the car that is so hard to overcome, justified or not (though I would argue that in a hilly city like Portland, the very real chance of rolling back into someone makes it justified.)
For those of you who can't possibly understand my terror, I ask that you suspend disbelief for one minute and imagine yourself doing something that is, in fact, very scary for you. Maybe putting your head in a lion's mouth. Maybe it's working with twenty-four bonkers middle schoolers by yourself. Whatever that scenario may be for you is what I face every time I get behind the wheel. The heart pounding, muscle-shaking, hard-breathing is my physiology reminding me that I am ready to fight or flee. The fear is real.
To tell you the truth, I was kind of hoping that I would be able to escape this kind of fear when I decided to dedicate my life to mindfulness and yoga. Don't you, get, like, a free pass from being human when you're studying this stuff? Shouldn't you just be able to breathe yourself into a blissful calm and approach all scenarios with that grace and centeredness? Perhaps my set point is particularly low, and I just need A LOT of work to get there, but in the meantime I'm constantly bumping up against my humanity in all of its glory.
There was one article in Outside magazine that I recently read that gave me hope. It was about the great stuntman Felix Baumgartner who was getting ready to jump from 24 miles above the earth for the highest BASE jump ever. However, he was stymied from completing the feat, despite his impressive stuntman record, because of his overwhelming fear of one aspect: his spacesuit. He would put it on and panic. It got so bad that he had to be slowly coached into wearing it, one body part at a time, by Michael Gervais, sports psychologist to the elite athletes (Baumgartner did eventually complete the jump successfully in October of 2012). This guy is no stranger to death-defying stunts, and surely had managed to get his fear in line on many occasions before. But this suit was really an obstacle for him, and he had to do a lot of work to overcome it.
My point is that we all have fears, even crazy stuntmen, and when we are confronted with them, we have to figure out how to manage that fear.
Today I texted my boyfriend, proudly reporting that I had driven around the block. By myself. I literally took a right, and another right, and a third before gliding back into our parking spot. But what a relief it was to do it! It wasn't the driving I was proud of. I was proud because I sat with that nervousness, breathing and observing my body challenging me to take off running from this stressful scenario. I sat until my blood stopped pumping so hard through my veins, so I could turn on the ignition and make the loop.
I still (not-so)-secretly hope that we will be gifted a new car with automatic transmission (anyone trying to get rid of theirs?) I am in no way enjoying this process, as I don't really like driving in the first place, and there are lots of extra steps to think about now. But I am trying. And I am proving to myself I can do scary things. I guess that might be worth it.
