365 Days Of Love. Day 115

I bought my car the summer before my first year of teaching. In a year of life in the Rio Grande Valley, my windshield was peppered with rock chips (and a few pretty decent cracks). By the end of my second year teaching, before my car's 2nd birthday, the windshield was in dire need of replacement. Each time I drove my Element home for a visit, my dad would ask, "When are you going to get that fixed?" My response was always the same, "When I leave Texas." 

Alas, I returned (temporarily but indefinitely) to South Dakota in June and my dad immediately started questioning me about my windshield. I, promising it didn't cloud my ability to see, refuted his requests with a slew of excuses. 

"I'll do it when I get a job" 

"I have lots of people to catch up with"

"I'm hanging out with Grandma today" 

After three weeks of the same conversation, my ever protective father called the glass repair business in town and immediately let me know that it would only cost $175.00 to fix the windshield. I told him I'd take it down there sometime and he said, casually, "Why don't you take it down there today?" So, to my father's liking, I scheduled an appointment to get my windshield fixed. This morning, I dropped my car off, went for a run, delivered meals with a friend, and ran back to pick up my car. 

Clarity. 

The first second I was in my car, I wasn't positive there was a windshield at all. There were no cracks in front of me, no huge rock chips, no marks that could be mistook for bigfoot's crushing paw. 

Clarity. 

I promise that prior to getting my windshield fixed my driving wasn't inhibited because of the glass-cracked canvas in front of me. However, after getting it fixed, I could see so much better. The clarity I thought I had before repairs and the actual clarity I experienced afterwards made me think about life. 

Often times, I think I do things that I, more or less, like. Things that don't necessarily fuel my passions, but certainly don't make me feel like a lowlife either. Like, spending afternoons perusing Facebook. I don't hate myself after I do it, but I also know it's something that doesn't necessarily better my life. I wonder if I swapped these things for those things that actually enhance my life. I wonder how much clarity I would experience. We're always evolving as human beings. Or, rather, I believe, we're always given opportunities to choose to evolve. It is through this evolution that our life witnesses greater

Clarity. 

Who would have thought that a windshield would provoke such thinking. Life has so much knowledge to share with us, I love it.