November 17, 2013. Austin, Texas.
At 2:43 pm, Sebastian Vettel takes the chequered1 flag at the United States Grand Prix, setting a new record for most consecutive Formula One wins in a season and putting an exclamation point on his fourth consecutive World Championship title. As he cools the car and waves to the crowd on the meandering lap back into the pits, he pulls into a run-off area to perform some celebratory donuts in his Red Bull RB9. In the moments preceding this display, he sends out a radio call to his team:
We have to remember these days, we have to remember these days, because there's no guarantee that they will last forever. Enjoy them as long as they last. I love you guys.
If you've ever heard record-setting athletes interviewed about their success, they always say some version of, "I just try to take things one [race, game, match] at a time and let others focus on the records. Maybe I'll look back on them when I'm older, but right now I'm focused on doing the best job I can."
And this makes sense. You can't exactly murder your competition if you're spending time with your head in the clouds, admiring all your achievements. 100% of your focus has to be on, you know, the murdering. Which is why I was shocked when I heard Vettel, who was only 26 at the time, heave all that wise perspective over the radio. And as the years followed and dominance in the sport shifted to the Mercedes team, his outpouring of gratitude that day seems even more prophetic. That race was not his final win, but that season turned out to be his final championship-winning effort.
I will not ever know Vettel's level of success. You - you, reading this now - will also never know success like that. Luckily, however, the recognition, reverence, and gratitude he expressed for the special moments in his career are not so untouchable to us unwashed masses.
We moved into this house about two years ago and the improvement projects are still coming at us fast and thick. For supplies, I usually go to the Lowes in a neighboring town west of us. The drive is either 10 or 13 minutes depending on which of the two routes I take. One route is a straight shot on a two-lane highway, while the other is a lazy river-like series of hills, farms, and twisty back roads. My fickle mood is the sole arbiter of which way I go, as rationality is relegated to standing on its tippy-toes and peering through the decision window from the outside. Sometimes I throw him a bone and go the quick way if I forgot something and have to make a second trip. Otherwise, I go which way the wind takes me. This carefree mindset is fertile ground for reflection.
On the way there, I'm in mission mode. I have a job to do and that job needs gear. Acquiring the gear is my focus and I don't want to miss anything and waste my time making another trip, so on the way there, I'm usually running through the list in my head, considering the other yet-to-be-listed things I might need. When the gear is on board and the car door shuts, however, it's mission accomplished. What happens next has two variations. Variation one: I turn onto the service road and take the third roundabout exit, which takes me to the traffic light where 90% of the time I have to wait to make my left turn and start the journey home. Variation two: I turn onto the service road and take the second roundabout exit, which takes me to the shopping center that has the soft pretzel shop.
Now, I don't want to claim that every time I get a pretzel on the way home I enter an out-of-body zen state during which I see the beginning and end of all space and time, speak to all beings both present and past in all languages, and hear the thoughts of the trees lining every farm I pass, but sometimes I get a pretzel fresh out of the oven, so that's bound to happen once in a while.
Anyway, once I have my orgasmic pretzel and I get to the traffic light, I have at least 10 minutes of driving before I get home and have to put my newly obtained gear to work. The last few minutes of the drive are spoken for, as my mind shifts back into mission mode to ponder what part of my project I'll undertake first, but the first five minutes are completely open. This five-minute window between the traffic light and my project-arrested mind is a paradise of freedom. At my age with my job and my family, it's unfathomably rare for me to experience any stretch of time where I have zero decisions to make. Yet as I make the left at the light and take my third bite, that tiny stretch of decisionless time commences. And it's in this space I have room to stretch out, reflect on what's great about the universe, and "remember these days".
I let my mind take a little stroll and notice whatever it wants to notice. It's not daydreaming, exactly. It's more present. It's a presence that permits me to feel complete appreciation. It's the sort of odd reassurance one might feel after watching Carl Sagan speak on the vastness of the universe. Out of the billions of galaxies, I'm somehow lucky enough to have ended up here, in this car, with five whole minutes of pure freedom at my disposal. And as much as I can, I try not to waste them.
Because there's no guarantee they'll last forever.
Thanks so much for reading.
Quote of the week:
On perfectionism…
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
- Anne Lamott, bird by bird
Have an outstanding weekend.
- Tim
Formula One is British-born sport, and it felt wrong to use the US English spelling, “checkered”. Kindly forgive my pretentiousness.