Empty Tank

Or…The 5 things I learned about finding happiness when I ran out of gas in Kansas.

Traveling the country in my Airstream, without a plan, has brought about many opportunities for growth and self-reflection. Not that either of those opportunities necessarily transpires into actionable movement and take root on a daily basis, but I like to tell myself the potential is still there every morning when I wake up…but that’s what my life has really been all about anyway; potential.

Or perhaps…my, as-of-yet-unrealized potential. But we’ll get to that another time.

Flash forward about 3 months since my last post, and here you find me still searching for that compelling “Aha!” moment, that moment that will help to turn on my creative juices and turn off the pain I left behind in my hometown; the demons, the self-sabotage, the recklessness.

I heard it said that Gypsies stay on the move because life’s problems eventually catch up to them. And I’ve been told a time or two that I have a Gypsy Soul and to wit;

“You can’t run from your problems!”

Turns out those people were right.

Well, partly, anyway.

OK…they were totally right.

Because let me tell you, once I do settle in somewhere or with someone, and just as I start to feel comfortable, I will eventually have a debilitating bout of anxiety or depression or whatever the hell it is that makes me feel “Fucked in the head” and then I seemingly can’t function and I immediately start looking for an escape route.

Usually by way of pulling up stakes and taking off down the road again.

That feeling of truly leaving something behind and in the rearview mirror is STRONG in my life, as while I am running...I feel free, at least for a little while.

There, I said it.

I run from my problems, most of which are self-inflicted, of course.

That doesn’t mean however, that I can’t deal with my problems, or with my feelings and pain on a different level, as once I take outside influences away from the equation I can see things more clearly, like now. Just writing about it and putting it out there for consumption by others is a huge step forward for me. As, once I am lost in a project, or am having a new adventure, or am in some other transcendental state of mind brought about by writing, exploring nature’s beauty or enjoying the companionship of friends and loved ones…

it is during those times that I truly do escape into what I would consider my happy state-of-mind.

The Dali Lama famously said this about life;

“The very purpose of our life is to seek happiness”

Now, I don’t recall if he said that to Bill Murry’s character, Carl Spackler, in Caddy Shack, or if I read it in a book, but the sentiment is the same, he said it!

But how do we do that? How do we find happiness?

I do know that the Dali Lama further stated this about happiness and his take on bringing about an inner self- discipline;

“By training our intellect and our feelings, our heart and our mind, we can transform our attitude and approach to living by identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those which lead to suffering and then cultivate those which lead to happiness.”

“That is the way”

-The Dali Lama

So how does this translate for me?

Well, take what I encountered on Interstate 70 awhile back;

It was getting close to dark and Jack and I came up on a small town and I thought about pulling off to get gas, but then I saw a sign that said another town was only 38 miles away. My Jeep had just informed me recently that I had 45 miles until I would run out of gas.

Was that 5 or 6 miles ago, or less?

There’s always a little in reserve anyway that they don’t tell you about, right?

I kept going.

Of course, I did.

Why? Because the thrill of the coming adventure made me happy.

And NOW, Jack and I had an adventure on our hands!

I even asked him: “Jack, we got this right?”

Jack - “uh…Woof?”

The sun was setting rapidly behind us.

No matter.

Me - “Sure we do.”

Jack - Quizzical Look.

35 miles later as we climbed a large hill (well, a hill any way, it is after all Kansas) the Jeep started losing its enthusiasm for the challenge, and the adventure was about to be

‘game on’.

Watching the endless cornfields of the Kansas countryside fly by as I headed East towards Kansas City, I was transfixed by the beauty of the blood red sky layered with hues of amber, and smiling to myself as I reflected on what “Amber Waves of Grain” meant to me as I saw it personified in the glorious Midwest dusk of the coming evening, reflecting too on my friend whom was waiting for me, with thoughts of the intellectual conversation over wine and dinner soon to be had, the comfort of having some companionship after months on the road, having someone close to me that I could talk to in person, and where I could gauge emotions by their facial expressions, where I could laugh, cry, where I could be authentic…intimacy with another human.

That also makes me happy.

So happy was I, thinking about all of this, that I had simply forgotten about the gas situation.

Jack – “uh, woof!”

Me – “What Jack? Why are you pacing around and nudging me with your cold wet nose, are you about to throw up?”

Jack – “No, dumbass. We are slowing down and that usually means we are stopping for bathroom or food or fetch, that is why I am nudging you with my cold wet nose and pacing around”

Me Looking down at the dash and thinking “Hmmm, I didn’t take the cruise control off…”

Jack – “woof!”

Me – “Oh, Shit. Jack! We're out of gas!”

Jack – “woof!”

So, there we are, 1.2 miles away from the exit that will take us to the Truck Stop, on the side of Highway 70, the busiest highway in the entire country, the main one that takes travelers East to West and West to East. It’s how you get to California from anywhere on the East Coast (people wouldn’t really travel the opposite direction, from California to the East Coast on purpose, would they?)

It’s late in the afternoon, dark-thirty, and there is about 10 feet of asphalt for me to pull over on, and park my Jeep and Airstream.

So I prepare to embark.

Hazards on.

Windows cracked for Jack.

Water bowl filled.

(Chill people, it’s 60 degrees outside, he’ll be fine)

The Airstream is 8 feet wide.

That means 1-2 feet of clearance between the 18 Wheelers droning by and my entire life's belongings.

So, I take off walking, uphill, towards the exit.

Zoom.

Zoom.

Zoom.

Those 18 wheelers are going by so fast I am certain I am about to be crushed when I hear the whine of their tires coming up from behind.

Fear is prevalent.

But there is nothing I can do about it, so I trudge on.

Funny thing.

Not one person stopped to offer me a ride. It was dark. So, OK. But still…

30 minutes later I arrived at the gas station and I asked to borrow a gas can.

It was very well used. The kind that you look at and are not sure if it will or if it won’t spontaneously combust once you fill it up.

By I didn’t have a much of a choice.

Note to self; carry my own gas can in the future.

I fill the gas can up and walk slowly towards the parking lot exit and the freeway entrances, slowly in hopes that Someone will see what is going on and offer me a ride back to the Jeep.

Someone: “Hmmm, that guy is walking with a gas can away from the gas station…I can only guess he must be getting ready to use the fuel to do a prescribed burn on a farm very nearby, or else he would have driven here, right? I doubt he needs a ride…”

Me looking directly at Someone: “This thumb I am holding up is pretty Universal. No? OK.”

I trudge back to the Jeep.

It’s not fun.

Dark.

Noisy.

Scary as Hell, in fact.

But I get back safely and when I do, there is this brand-new area rug on the road, with a tag still on it, lying right in front of my Jeep, likely the result of the wind blowing it out of Someone’s truck bed.

“Ha-ha, Someone (bitch!). Karma!”

And…it matches my Tommy Bahama Airstream décor almost perfectly.

So, I take it as a sign.

And I take it.

See how it matches!

Calm down, Covid Police Peeps. I also washed it!

I then proceed to start the gas-can to gas-tank fueling process.

If you have ever done this, I don’t care which brand of gas can you have, you are going to get covered in gas.

And I did.

But not in the traditional way.

Oh no.

No No.

The gas can nozzle, BROKE OFF in my Jeep’s gas tank.

That’s right.

And when it did, it spewed the fuel of Someone’s imaginary prescribed burn, all over me.

And it’s here at this moment that I started paying attention to what was going around me.

And laughed out loud, joyously.

This was my adventure.

This will make a good story (at least I hope Someone is still reading)

This made me happy.

I began to reflect on how one of the most mundane and frustrating things in life; running out of gas, could lead to some of the most important lessons for me, about happiness and life.

1. Fill up your tank whenever it’s getting low.

The same can be said for your happiness and emotional well-being; if a feeling of melancholia begins to engulf you, one should focus on something that brings them happiness and joy, fill their tank up with those thoughts, and continue on down the road.

2. 18-Wheelers carry with them an enormous tail-wind that can knock you over, even after they have passed you by. If you anticipate and brace for it, you’ll be fine.

Past traumas in one’s life will do the same; we can be going along with feelings of rainbows and frolicking unicorns one moment, and then out of nowhere that tailwind from another time rushes in and takes our breath away, and it devours our peace of mind and replaces our happiness with fear and anxiety. However, if we prepare for it, if we anticipate this event occurring, we can better stand our ground. We can harden our resolve. We KNOW what that pain is going to feel like, as we have likely felt it before, just as we know what that 18-Wheeler tail wind is going to feel like, but if we plant our feet on the ground solidly, we won’t get knocked down, we will continue on.

3. Most people won’t stop and help you. Even in Kansas.

Sometimes you have to just walk alone and take care of your own needs.

4. Humor can be found in most any situation.

Breaking the gas can nozzle off in my gas tank after completing the arduous trek back to my Jeep, in the dark, dodging flying rocks and tailwinds, was to say the least, very frustrating. And then I looked down at the scene from outside the situation, and I laughed out loud at the comedy of it all. I mean, really?

Who breaks off a nozzle on a gas can into their gas tank, ever?

This guy.

5. The walk back is a lot longer than the walk ahead.

Evidenced by carrying a full 2.5 gallon gas can that’s sloshing around flammable liquid, at a weight of 20.875 total pounds, back along the same 1.2 mile path to your vehicle, again up-hill (yes, it’s a hill, you go up from any direction, until you reach the top, then you go down, until you need to go back to the top again) in the dark, with all the 18-Wheeler tail winds and blinding headlights that come with retracing the path just walked; much like going BACK and re-visiting our past life, our past traumas, the feelings of darkness, of blindly navigating the difficulties we face as we reflect back on a time that has saddled us with an extra weight, knowing that if we continue to go backwards and dwell on those difficult experiences and continue to let the weight of them bog us down, it will only serve to inhibit own journey forward.

The reality is, that our very next step is the step that has the potential to propel us in the direction we wish to go.

It’s up to us, to take it.

It’s just one step…but hopefully it will be in the right direction.

I’m sure there are more exciting events that one can find analogous to life and happiness, but running out of gas helped bring some clarity to me, at a time when I needed it most.

It gave me the opportunity to reflect on my situation, and as I did so I felt invigorated,

and with every step forward,

I felt happier.