Don’t Crash the Car Tonight (It Doesn’t Suit You Anymore)
Hello My Friend,
The other day a song popped into my head. It was the song, ‘Don’t Crash the Car Tonight” by the late 80’s/early 90’s band Mary’s Danish. It’s a bouncy, raucous song that includes the lyrics, ‘Don’t crash the car tonight, it doesn’t suit you anymore.’
I’ve always found this line humorous as well as little bitter-sweet. It’s funny that someone who would have to be told, reminded, to not to crash the car again, as if it happens all the time and it’s starting to get old.
The song is about an unhealthy, unrefined, and ultimately doomed romantic relationship between a man and a woman, and the woman who is having a hard time letting the relationship die because she can’t stop thinking about him, she can’t let go. She wants him to end the relationship that she doesn’t even want to be in, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Instead of making up her mind to let go and finally end it, she puts the burden on him when she says, “Please say you don't care. I need some peace of mind.”
And this got me thinking about those of us who have a hard time letting go of the past, of old painful memories; of those of us who keep crashing the car.
This is what a lot of us tend to do with painful memories and awful events from our past, especially those having to do with physical abuse of any kind. We cling to them. We can’t find a way to let them go. We keep bringing them up and re-crashing ourselves, re-living the painful memories associated with the crash over and over again.
We hope that, somehow, the painful memories will leave us alone. That they’ll just stop driving by our thoughts and somehow disappear never to be heard from again. But that’s not how it works. The past is never going to break it off with you. You have to decide to end your horrible relationship with it. What does the past care? It’s got nothing else to do but to bug you, right? The past has a lot of time to kill, and it would love your company while doing so.
So perhaps it might help you to get over this kind pain from past trauma if you can think of your body as a car.
It doesn’t matter what kind of car you have or what you think of your car. A lot of people fuss and fawn over their car while a lot of others don’t really care too much about their cars. But whether or not you have a great fondness for your car, if your car was ever smashed in a traffic accident, you probably don’t have an overly emotional reaction to the event. Sure, it may have been shocking, and shook you for a bit, or maybe it have even resulted in an injury or even worse. But no matter what happened, the good news is that you are here now.
As far as your car goes, you may have shed a tear or two if you put a lot of time and effort into keeping your car in good condition or you had it pimped-out with fancy accessories and custom paint, but even still you would never carry the car’s ‘pain’ with you. You don’t stay sad from the lingering memories of the impact, the physical crushing and breaking of the metal and glass of the car. You don’t ‘feel’ the cars ‘injuries’ because the car is inanimate, it’s not necessarily even real. It’s just a physical item. It is just a vehicle to move you about in this world. It’s no big deal.
Your body, just like your car, is not you, so the things that seemed traumatic and painful to the body had nothing to do with the real You, your Spirit, it had only to do with you, the body - which, as wonderful as it may be, is just the thing that holds You, but You isn’t necessarily the body. You is infinitely bigger than a body.
Maybe you think of the details of the accident here and there, but the experience of the car, the experience that the car went through is not your experience anymore. It’s over. Let’s face the facts. You car got smashed. Maybe it’s totaled and its usefulness is fulfilled and complete - and you’re forced to get a new car, something entirely different from the one you had before. Or maybe your car is just beat up and you’re stuck driving a clunker for a while, it doesn’t matter. You don’t spend time crying over all the damage that the car endured, nor do you dwell on the minutia of each little scratch and dent. All that matters is that you get back on the road.
And so it is with us and our bodies that may have experienced a crash or two along the way. Maybe you got some scratches and dents here or there, or got caught in some horrific traffic disaster that injured innocent bystanders. It doesn’t matter to what degree you were impacted, we’ve all had our not-so-pretty smash ups along the way.
I implore you to distinguish between the events of your body’s experiences and your emotional reactions to re-livng the details of the crash. You must divest yourself from phantom sensations and associated emotions and feelings of your physical body’s past, and view them objectively and honestly as simply occurrences along your journey toward enlightenment.
The crash doesn’t stay with the car. The car doesn’t remember it. The car doesn’t hold a grudge against the other car nor the drivers involved in the crash. It’s just a vehicle. What does it know of pain and trauma? What does it care? It doesn’t.
Sure, I know that there is a more ‘personal’ connection to the body, but at the same time, we must admit, the body is simply just a vehicle to let your Spirit reveal itself. That’s what the body does. That’s what it’s for. Like a car holds and moves your body, your body moves and holds your You, your Spirit, your I AM.
Of course, your body cannot fully contain your Spirit because your Spirit can move beyond your body at any point for a myriad of reasons, impulses, or desires, and your broken car didn’t have that kind of luxury. But your body is fully encompassed by your Spirit and therefore can take advantage of what the Spirit has to offer, and so you, unlike your crashed car, you have the ability to re-make yourself at will; the ability to re-build itself. Your car didn’t have the ability to learn something from the crash and become a better, more productive, more fulfilled, more aware, and more enlightened car.
So, since you do have a bit of connection with the body, why don’t you do that body (your life) a favor and not keep remembering all the gory details of the crash thus re-living it, and re-crashing it all over again. You don’t have to forget or ‘deny’ anything. Just get over the idea that a negative memory is real now. It’s not. It stays where it’s at - in the past. It can’t hurt you now because it isn’t happening other than being remember.
Yeah, trauma sucks, but fuck you for continuing to re-live it and forcing yourself through all of that ‘horrible’ pain and trauma yet once again, for the ten billionth time.
How many times do you want to keep doing it? Enough already. How long do you expect something to hurt? Forever? Alright, well…have at it. But that’s really just living in the shadow of Death.
It seems that sometimes some of us need to hold on to our hurt because it defines us. Some are so accustomed the to the role of ‘victim’ that they are afraid to let go of it because it’s such a comfortable role.
A lot of people have come to be so associated with their trauma, that if they actually overcame it, they wouldn’t know who they were. Which is pretty sad.
For what it’s worth, my car got crashed, smashed, sold for scrap, flattened, rolled out, melted down, and turned into nails well before I even had a license to drive. And those crashes fucked me up for a long time. I was King of the Re-Crash for quite a while.
Gracefully, I figured out how to stop crying about it, and I was able to finally pull myself out of my miserable wreck. It was something that Neville said when he discussed the idea of revising the past. I finally examined what really happened and, divorced from all of the psycho-drama, I could see the car crashes for the simple, dumb crashes that they were: a few out of control drivers who crashed into my car, temporarily throwing me off my course. That’s it. Some poor souls, through ignorance or confusion, made either an error or a choice that affected my car. But who cares why it happened, what the motivations were, or what it all meant? It happened. Great. So what? Now what? A crash can’t last forever, right? You’ve got to move on, crawl out, and stumble away. What else can you do?
That crash, or any other ‘disaster’ or unfortunate incident, can’t be the end of your journey. You were going somewhere important, somewhere that you know you’re supposed to be. And so you must keep going. Fuck the car. Get a new one, or fix this beat-up hunk of junk you’ve got now and get back on the road toward fulfillment. Nothing can stop you from becoming who you know you will be. So Be it.
If you’re paying any attention at all, you’ll have learned something from your car crashing incidents. Hopefully you’re a better driver because of it - and, of course, that should be celebrated. Congratulations. Enjoy the journey ahead.
But for the love of God, will you please stop re-hashing the crash? Can you stop re-mangling your emotions with events that aren’t actually happening now?
Please, don’t crash the car tonight. It doesn’t suit you anymore.
Until we meet again, my friend, think good thoughts.
All my love,
Rev. Shakes Spear
7-7-24
