You Missed a Spot

They built a 24 hour do-it-yourself car wash place a block from my apartment a few months ago and I pass it almost every day. All sorts of people are washing all sorts of cars, knee deep in chemical foam, hunkering down to scrub and spray every inch of their rice rockets and SUVs.

I see one guy almost every other day. He's a teenager of Latino descent--tall, skinny, with dense, curly black hair pushed back (at least when he's washing a car) by a headband that usually coordinates with the baggiest athletic shorts imaginable. Usually when I see him, I'm stuck in traffic, so I glance over every once in awhile to see him approach the washing of his burnt orange Toyota hatchback with painstaking detail. If I drive by and it's time for a foam bath, I'll see him kneel in front of the car to make sure every part of his front grate is bathed in foam. If it's time for a wax, he'll stand back every once in awhile, rag held back like a brush dripping with paint, his forehead crinkled in concern, before attacking spots on his car I would never think to care about.

On my way home tonight, I didn't have to stop in traffic, but I did see him and his orange toyota, at 11:30pm, getting it's thrice weekly bath. All I could think was, "This guy REALLY likes his car. Really. This car occupies much of him and it seems to make him happy."

And realizing that made me kind of introspective, on two levels. For one, I feel like I don't have an all encompassing passion like that in my life. In fact, my body has always rejected anything too all encompassing. Even in school, while many people were focusing intensely on the one field they wanted to excel in, I was taking the "Poly Sci, Film, Creative Writing" track, which has led to things like my former college professor saying to me last week as I dropped in on him:

"So, write any more novels, Keith? Is that what you're doing?"

"No, I'm a web application developer."

"Of course you are!" he says with a little bit of a playful sneer, "Always onto the next thing, aren't you? You become completely proficient in something and then move on."

And it's not like he's too far off. I once burst into tears when I was a preteen when I was talking to my mom about careers. "I just want to do a little bit of everything! Can't they pay me to do that!"

Besides not having a guiding passion, like a car, or role playing games, or building the ultimate surround sound system (does anyone do that anymore?), the second introspective thought came to mind: do I not have a guiding passion because I believe in Jesus? Did that overtake my desire to collect, obsess, and become an expert at something?

I'm not complaining, but it is a valid worry: have I let my relationship with God stamp out basic human enjoyment of certain things? And, if I believe in God, don't I believe that God created things to be good and only sin sullied them? In other words, have I been so concerned with keeping myself from things that seem worldly that I've become ungrateful for the world I'm living in?

Sheesh!

And then, as I sat down in my apartment and took a deep breath, I realized that I just recently called my parents to say "hi" and recounted entire jokes from the Daily Show and one from a television show that isn't even on the air yet. And for a moment, I was shockingly happy that I had obsessed over something that trivial.