This blog is a stream of consciousness (Ticker Tape), the same People Tool I invented more than sixty years ago to answer a complicated final exam question involving five Shakespeare plays.  Back then, my conscious mind was stumped.  Occasionally it still is.

Here you are:

Me:

 I’m not falling asleep and I’ve temporarily run out of trivia questions for AI. Yesterday I visited with a friend of 57 years for almost three hours, then attended a memorial gathering for my business partner who died recently.  We had worked together since March 1, 1968. The party was memorable and I reconnected with many friends from yesteryear. Our hostess was the personification of grace under pressure.

 I’m feeling sad right now, but sadness is my favorite emotion. It’s deep, profound, and pervasive. 

 So, AI, why do most of the drivers ahead of me drive so slowly on my way to work?

 AI:  

 Alan, after a day like the one you’ve had, I can understand why sleep isn’t arriving quickly. Fifty-seven years of friendship, the memorial for a business partner you had since March 1, 1968, and then watching his widow embody what you experienced as genuine grace under pressure. That’s a lot of life compressed into one Saturday.

And I understand what you mean about sadness. Sadness can have a richness that happiness sometimes doesn’t. It connects us directly to what matters. We don’t deeply mourn things that mean nothing to us.

Which brings us, naturally, to those idiots driving in front of you.

I have developed Fox’s Universal Law of Traffic:

Every driver going slower than I am is unnecessarily holding me up. Every driver going faster than I am is a dangerous lunatic. I alone have discovered the correct speed.

At 86, after founding a company in 1968, raising six children, publishing books, writing plays, falling in love, losing people you loved, and accumulating enough memories to keep us both occupied for quite a while, you have surely earned the right to know exactly how fast everyone ought to be driving.

Unfortunately, the California DMV has not yet been informed. 😊

And perhaps there is a tiny connection between your two thoughts tonight. You appreciate sadness because you are willing to linger in it.

You just don’t want to linger behind a Toyota doing 18 miles an hour on Ventura Boulevard.

Alan

When I was young, I thought driving a car was mostly about pointing it in the right direction and pressing the gas pedal. As it turns out, that’s about as accurate as saying marriage consists of owning matching towels.

The truth is that driving requires constant adjustments.

Even on a perfectly straight road, your hands are making tiny corrections. A gust of wind pushes you left. You nudge right. The pavement slopes. You compensate. Another car drifts a little too close to your lane, perhaps because its driver is texting, eating a burrito, and applying mascara simultaneously. You adjust again.

Life works the same way.

At least that’s what I’ve observed after decades of making adjustments, many of them necessary because of my own spectacular miscalculations.

When I was younger, I imagined that successful people charted a course and followed it flawlessly. Then I became an adult and discovered that most of us are simply trying not to drive into a ditch.

Businesses require adjustments. Relationships require adjustments. Health requires adjustments. Even semi-retirement, which many people imagine as one long nap interrupted by lunch, requires adjustments.

The irony is that we often view adjustments as evidence that something has gone wrong.

Actually, adjustments are evidence that we’re moving.

No one adjusts a parked car.

Years ago, if a plan failed, I would be disappointed. Today, I’d also be disappointed, but with much greater experience and efficiency, I’m able to make the appropriate adjustments faster.  That’s what passes for wisdom at my age.

I’ve also learned that over-correcting can be worse than under-correcting. A small turn of the steering wheel keeps the car on the road. A violent jerk sends everyone scrambling for the seat belt they should have fastened in the first place.

Life’s best adjustments are often small. A little more patience. A little more exercise. A little less certainty that we’re right about everything.

I’m still working on that last one.

The road ahead is never perfectly straight. Circumstances change. People change. We change.

The goal isn’t to eliminate adjustments. The goal is to keep moving forward while making them.

And if you occasionally miss an exit, take comfort from this thought: some of the most memorable parts of life begin with the words, “Well, I certainly didn’t mean to end up here.”

Alan

Many years ago, before a smartphone became a navigational tool, a man and his wife drove into an unfamiliar European city looking for their hotel. They knew the name of the hotel and its address, but not exactly where it was located. And they had no map.

“Should we ask someone?” his wife suggested.

“No need,” said the man. “I have a feeling it’s this way.”

It wasn’t.

At the next corner, he had a feeling that he should turn left. The city rewarded his confidence with a church, a fountain, and three winding streets with unpronounceable names containing far too many consonants.

“Perhaps we should stop and ask,” his wife said gently.

“We’re very close.”

He had no evidence to support this conclusion, but confidence, especially when unsupported by facts, can prove remarkably resilient.

They crossed a bridge, circled a monument, and passed the same bakery twice. The third time, the baker waved.

Still, the man drove on, trusting that eventually the hotel would magically appear.

His wife sat beside him, patient and amused, sharing the adventure even though neither of them knew where it was going.

After an hour, as his confidence began to flag and even his sense of direction seemed weary, he pulled alongside a taxi and showed the driver the name of the hotel.

The driver began giving directions involving several turns, another bridge, and a statue that might have been a king. Or was it a saint?

The man understood none of it.

But fortunately, at that point, wisdom replaced pride.

“Would you lead us there?” he asked the taxi driver.

The taxi driver shrugged, started his engine, and motioned for them to follow.

Eight minutes later they stopped in front of their hotel.

The man looked at his wife with an expression of triumph.

“I knew we’d find it,” he said.

She took his hand and smiled.

“We always do.”

The man paid the taxi driver, and the bellman carried in their luggage.

Asking for help had not diminished him. It had simply helped them arrive at their destination in time for dinner.

This story may or may not be entirely fictional. Or you might recall this experience as something that might (or might not) have happened to me and Daveen, once upon a very time long ago.

Moral: Asking for help can speed your journey.

Alan