Straight up premonition

Last night, as I was relaxing into sleep, I had a vision of a car accident. Another car hitting mine at an angle. Nothing before or after, just seeing a car coming at, then hitting, mine. The feeling was of utter inevitability.  A fait accomplis.

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Sounds like a classic, textbook-style premonition to me.  Tapping into the information realm, are you Liz?

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Interesting times–eh. It’s amazing to me the span of the evolutionary spectrum. The unconcsious mom, the aware cashier, your prescience. So glad you’re OK; albeit a bit freaked.
What did you make for dinner (38 is a big group)?!!
Chris

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Chicken Cacciatore, green salad, baguettes, rice, bosc pears.I had two helpers, so I didn't cook it all by myself. But I did make a really awesome cacciatore.

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(Two years later and Liz has her own Crystal Ball Business.)

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Honestly? I really hope not. I'm totally ok with time being linear and not doing weird things like letting me know what's ahead. This only happened to me one other time, as a teenager, and it wasn't pleasant then, either.

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I'm glad that you're OK, Liz - the car looks worse for wear, though.  Hmm…keep me abreast of any further premonitory dreams, hmm?  

spiralz,
r.thor

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And dinner was still delicious!

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Glad you're ok.

It is kinda freaky when you get a premonition isn't it?

I had one about a plane crash. I woke and had a clear image and feeling of a plane crash, woke my husband because his sister was flying that morning. When we got up the tv news told us there had been a crash between London and Belfast. My sister in law should have been on the flight but she overslept and missed it.

Juliee

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It is, Juliee. There's that part of you that's so proud of it, too. “Look how special I am!” And then you realize, well, just how much do you want to know about the future? Especially unpleasant events?

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Hey Liz,

Its really cool you were able to stay so calm and present throughout the day. 

I can't remember a time when I had a premonition like the one you described, mostly dejavu or clear awareness of a situation as it is unfolding but not the movie and then the replay.

And I too am really glad you are ok!

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Gina, staying calm in traffic is one of my most challenging growth areas! So I have lots of practice, and lots of practice at failing. Yesterday it just seemed crucial.

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hi Liz

hello from london!  Robert has a full men's group this weekend, so I actually got to have a day off and go to the Portobello Road market - a long time desire! 

I'm so glad to hear that you are all right.  However, even though you were somewhat 'prepared' for it, it is always a shock to be in an accident.  Have you cried and let the shock pass through your system yet?  Sometimes we are so busy taking care of business that we don't allow ourselves to do that, and the shock stays in our system. 

The first time I was travelling to Canada to visit Robert, I was involved in a minor accident on the way to the airport that took our my radiator.  I wasn't hurt, but was shaken up.  When I called Robert from the airport, his first question was, “Have you cried yet?”  I was surprised and said no.  He told me to find a corner in the airport and let the shock move through… so I did!  And I felt much better afterwards.

blessings,
Diane

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Hi, diane-

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Hey Liz,

I'm really glad you're ok and weren't hurt.

I/we had a very good day today with Robert, will hopefully have more to say about this after the weekend. I'm happy to be alive too… and am running what will hopefully be a luxurious bath… my body doth ache and can barely wait for the water to get deep enough.

Love, 

 Lol

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Sounds scary Liz, premonition or not, these things always feel like near misses.

Sometimes tears aren't needed and sometimes there is simply no space for them. Though in this hectic year when I've had lots of personal stuff to deal with that some of you are aware of-anding marriage, selling house, daughter's wedding etc etc, I had 2 incidents within about 3 weeks. The first, my daughter slipped on a muddy country road and flipped the car into a field. She was suspended upside down by the seatbelt and cut out by the fire brigade, remarkable unharmed apart from some bruising. Then my son was hit from behind by some idiot wielding a traffick cone, he woke up in hospital having his face stitched and will bear the scar for life. They were amazed his skull wasn't fractured, and the scar is from where he hit the pavement forehead first, already unconscious.

I think I was just so grateful to still have them both, and to be reminded of what really is important, that crying didn't come into it. What would that have achieved? I'm not suggesting that crying is a bad thing, but in a real crisis is it of no help and smacks sometimes of self indulgence.

I also waited for the reaction in the following days, it never came, just huge gratutude and a conscious effort not to enter the realms of what could have happened had it all played out differently. And yes, I did address that I could potentially have lost them both in 3 weeks…but I didn't. if I had, then I really would have had something to cry for.

Take care of yourself however is appropriate for you

much love
Liz

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Bless you, Liz, you're SO British! I know I have a stiff upper lip lying around here somewhere! ;)

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Liz, I don't think crying is ever self-indulgence (unless it's feigned), and I don't agree that it's of “no help.”  Crying is a way to connect with and release what's going on inside – fear, sadness, joy, anger, shame, etc.  In a crisis, taking action is the external work that's needed to make things right, and crying can be the internal work that's needed to make things right.  In an integral framework, the internal is as important as the external, and ultimately they aren't really two separate things.

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This 'aside' about releasing the 'energy' of an acute non-fatal, 100% recoverable-from incident strikes me very surprisingly!  I don't know what extent of “suppression” I have done, or regularly do….but if my car was run into, and there was no personal 'bodily' damage I might have a mild, reaction to the inconvenience of the damaged car, and otherwise, I doubt my heartbeat would even increase  at the scene of the accident, short of the time it takes to metabolize adrenaline in the 'fight or flight' response for survival….. I would have no tears….and I would experience an immediate sweet sense of gratitude that 'nothing much' happened that I need to be in any way sad about……. 

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Hi Jane,  Your post caught my eye, and I empathise with you and hear you.  You say…

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Clare, Thank you for this post….

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Hi Clare

I too felt the 'rightness' of this distinction between trauma and shock and a sense that the descriptions of recapitulations cover the vast majority of the population.
Scary thought that we're all wandering around in this state of unrecognised shock. Which links through to Jane's comment of generational shock.

Juliee

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yes, it is scary.  And when we begin to thaw out, and shake off the shock, it can be very painful, but it does put an end to our suffering.

love

Clare

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Well, and perhaps the thing about shock is:  “it can't be shaken off” in the usual way……Nothing is really ever the same again….there is a different kind of healing required.  Shock really is a tsunami of the soul, and every “thing” that provides our usual orientation to being gets leveled.   

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Jane, you asked

what is real trauma and what is an event that just is an interesting experience?

I think an event is a real trauma (or shock, in extreme cases) when it shakes up our internal equilibrium, be that physiological, emotional, energetic, etc.  Sometimes that shake-up can happen within our conscious awareness, and sometimes we repress it so that it's happening and affecting us without our awareness.  That said, a lot of things can shake up our equilibrium and are therefore traumas, but we usually only use the word “trauma” in referring to the more severe traumas.  Sometimes in therapeutic circles, there is a distinction made between a small t trauma and a big T Trauma.  But really, trauma is on a continuum, and there's not a sharp distinction where to draw the line.  Of course, if something is truly just an “interesting experience,” it doesn't disturb our equilibrium, but if it does, then it's a trauma, even if it's very mild.  We may choose not to refer to it as “trauma” so as not to inflate it into something that sounds dramatic and huge, but that doesn't mean that it's not.

when is processing 'trauma' actually healing, and when is it a neurotic indulgence about something that needs a stiff upper lip and a steeling of the heart…?

I don't think anything ever needs a stiff upper lip or steeling of the heart – I think those ways of coping are pretty much always harmful.  That said, I get your point about how sometimes “processing” isn't really processing – it's just fueling our narratives/stories about being victim/martyr, etc.  Lauren explained this distinction really well in a previous post where she said

it is possible to be crying and authentically feeling, yet still keeping the experience safely non-transformational by virtue of keeping the focus on the emotion and the personal story that evokes the emotion, rather than letting emotion (and potentially tears, but not necessarily tears) serve the flow of the energies without serving the continual re-creation of the egoic story. In other words, you can cry your way into a deeper contraction of the self-sense, or you can cry as a practice of loosening the bonds of that story.

But I think we have to be careful about using terms like “neurotic indulgence,” which seem to imply a judgment of the person's processing, as if they are bad people or are doing something wrong for which they should be judged.  Sometimes people, in their sincere attempts to process trauma, get caught in these victim stories simply because they don't know any other way to move into and attempt to heal the trauma.  They need kind, gentle redirection to direct their energies into the trauma in a more effective way, such as, for instance, attending to the emotions without becoming identified with them or getting caught in the story.

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Tely, I realize I may be being politically-incorrect in therapeutic terms in the way I am digging at this 'thing'……I am trying to look at my own frustration.  

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Hi, Jane!  Thanx for your honesty.  Just a thought I'd like to share about what you're saying.  Judging (which we all do, myself included) may be a way of creating and perpetuating “the pain of avoiding pain.”  One useful way of working with judgment might be rather than having it be a positionality to hold onto, using it as an entry point to see what pain we're avoiding – what authentic emotional energy/movement we're trying to mask or block using judgment.  I've found this to be very useful, and as reluctant as I sometimes am to give up the “rightness” and protectedness of judgment, I inevitably find that going underneath the judgment to unblock and let the feelings flow gives me much more freedom and flexibility, a more authentic experience of being alive.

Wow – our posts are getting narrower and narrower!  If this discussion goes on long enough, we'll be down to one word per line!

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Lots of stuff coming up for me as I read this thread. The distinction between shock and trauma was useful; reading the descriptions I realize I've experienced both. The shock happened when I learned someone very close to me had committed suicide, which completely blew me apart. It was just like the article posted by Clare described - there were no defenses left. I was destroyed in some sense by that event. A very productive and dangerous growth opportunity which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. :P

As for trauma…yeah, I've had my share of that. The funny thing is, though, for a long time I would often say to myself “What I've experienced is nothing - others have it so much worse, I'm a pathetic self-indulgent piece of shit for wallowing so much in my own little pain.  Why can't I just get the fuck over it?” During that phase I'd be very susceptible to any feedback that - explicitly or implicitly - seemed to amount to “Suck it up and stop your pathetic whining, you neurotic loser,” since that was what I was saying to myself on a regular basis already (along with other negative self-talk). I remember a friend once telling me about a therapist he'd briefly been treated by, who primarily dealt with refugees from some of the hellholes of the world you read about in the news; if you were dealing with run-of-the-mill middle-class first-world issues - rather than, say, having had your entire family raped and killed before your eyes - he had a limited amount of respect and patience for working with you. It would not have been productive for me to work with such a therapist, however helpful he might be for those with real problems.

Eventually I became very close friends with someone whose father had brutally murdered her mother when she was nine years old. Her life wasn't exactly a walk in the park before that event, and afterward it was a lot worse. She's someone who has indisputably gone through a lot of trauma and so when I told her some things about my own life and she told me firmly that I had experienced trauma, and that I should not discount that because other people (like her) had experienced much worse, it was really validating and even a little revelatory.

Which is not to say that there isn't a lot of self-indulgence and lack of perspective in the air these days, in therapeutic settings and on talk-shows etc. But if you perceive that in someone, how do you give them feedback on that - assuming it's appropriate for you to do so - without shaming the person?

spiral out,

Arthur

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I think you meant to say: “she told me firmly that I had experienced trauma, and that I should not discount that”

Liz

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Liz: I think you meant to say: “she told me firmly that I had experienced trauma, and that I should not discount that”

~

Yes - thank you.  I've made the correction.

spirals,
Arthur

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Liz,

Impressive story. I kind of had that thought “Look how special you are!” too. It's just a natural reaction to an incident of deep knowing and and prescience, I think you might as well feel the coolness of it, along with whatever else you feel.

I'm very glad it wasn't a serious car accident, and that no one suffered bad injuries.

I agree with Tely that crying isn't self-indulgent unless it's contrived, but I don't think it is the only valid response, the only way to set things right internally. Shock, grief, fear… can't they be processed authentically potentially without tears? I think a lot depends on the individual, and a lot on how open you are through the course of a crisis or shock or accident. Also, as Liz pointed to, how bad the crisis actually was.

And this is an aside but relevant to the tangent this discussion is taking – I do think that for those of us who are easy criers it is possible to be crying and authentically feeling, yet still keeping the experience safely non-transformational by virtue of keeping the focus on the emotion and the personal story that evokes the emotion, rather than letting emotion (and potentially tears, but not necessarily tears) serve the flow of the energies without serving the continual re-creation of the egoic story. In other words, you can cry your way into a deeper contraction of the self-sense, or you can cry as a practice of loosening the bonds of that story.

Maybe that discussion is for another thread another time…

Sending love,
Lauren

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Great distinction, Lauren!

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Liz –

Sending hugs!

First dental struggles, then a premonition, then an accident? You're on a roll, girl! I'm grateful you're in one piece.

And thinking about premonitory dreams (and our “specialness” ;) I have them once in a blue moon, but they're usually of the “nice” kind – not warnings about accidents and the like. Sometimes there is a vivid, memorable image in a dream that I will see in waking life weeks or months later.

For example: I had a dream that took me into rich, lush hilly countryside. The hills were peppered with  multicolored, oddly-shaped boulders – they were a pinkish tint with swirls of other colors in them – and these boulders were filled with a pink liquid. I cracked one of the boulders like an egg and washed my face with the liquid, which was a healing, celebratory act.

A few weeks later in waking life I went on a long silent retreat that resulted in deep rest and healing for me. Directly after that I stayed for a few days at a retreat house in Berkeley (wanting to transition back into regular, noisy life). The first thing I noticed when entering my room there was a wall calendar with a striking image of some lush, springtime Berkeley hills at sunrise – including some oddly-shaped, pink boulders with swirls of other colors in them just as I'd seen in my dream. The hills, the boulders, and the sky in that photo were the same images I'd seen in my dream…

Mary

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Thanks, Mary. And Clare, I plan on giving that article more time later. I didn't sleep well last night.

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Well, if you believe in the superstition that things come in threes, you've had your lot for the time being.

Juliee

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I want to add one more thing about pain and suffering, shock and trauma, what-have-you:

When you compare one's to another's, nobody wins. There's really no point. We feel what we feel. There's no sense in denying it just because we deem it unworthy.

I've felt “no big deal” after having life-threatening experiences, and I've felt like my world was going to end because of one misplaced kiss. Comparing those things is fruitless.

Liz

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Liz, I’m just glad you are OK.

Love, G

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It is a thread divergence, the above discussion on shock and trauma and needs its own venue…..but until, I figure out how to make those links work…..

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The divergence is fine, Jane. I love it when a thread takes off of its own accord.

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A fire, OMG Liz. What a week you are having.

Lots of great stuff here I want to come back to when I have a bit more time, but I just wanted to say I'm thinking of you.

I've been thinking about you a lot the past day or two, lol I can remember the last time I really cried, it was Summer 2005 and I remember standing in a room feeling angry and lost and upset and you just came over and hugged me. I cried like a baby that day. IT's not something I'm prone to and I remember at the time thinking how safe it felt to be like that with you. That stiff upper lip trembles a bit sometimes.

Tely, I just want to say I wasn't dismissing crying as self indulgence, and if people feel a need to do it and it helps I'm fine with that. I think it's just that my default setting is to think “what can i do that's useful?”, so I feel for me, getting all caught up in the emotion of something doesn't help me.

And Liz, you are so right, its not about comparisons. People feel what they feel and react how they react. And knowing something else is objectively more horrible/tragic/upsetting doesn' help anyone cope with what they have in front of them. One person's experience isn't invalidated because it isn't as huge or terrible as anothers. That would be like saying it's silly to mourn the death of a loved one because babies in Africa die needlessly every day. I don't think any of us can really measue another's subjective experience.

Liz

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“People feel what they feel and react how they react. And knowing something else is objectively more horrible/tragic/upsetting doesn' help anyone cope with what they have in front of them. One person's experience isn't invalidated because it isn't as huge or terrible as anothers. That would be like saying it's silly to mourn the death of a loved one because babies in Africa die needlessly every day. I don't think any of us can really measue another's subjective experience.”

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Jane, although the mind likes to create dichotomies, I think any sharp distinctions we make in this realm are artificial.  For instance, you ask

when we are grieving because our fear is heightened by a series of unfortunate events, our sense of safety and control is rattled(all of this is generated by our particular subjective experience), and when are we grieving a tragedy?

I think what constitutes “tragedy” is subjective.  In a sense, a tragedy is “when our fear (or grief) is heightened by a series of unfortunate events, our sense of safety and control is rattled (all of this is generated by our particular subjective experience).”  We all have different subjective experiences of what we would call “tragedy,” and this is based in part on having our sense of safety and control rattled (or empathically projecting that experience onto someone else whose circumstances we're observing).

You referred to “conflating truly traumatic events with conditioned reactivity that feeds on a sense of crisis.”  But what constitutes a “truly traumatic” event?  The person's subjective experience?  An observer's subjective determination?  I would say that a trauma is something that disregulates us – emotionally, physiologically, mentally, energetically, relationally, etc.

We can respond to trauma in more effective ways or more ineffective ways.  Ineffective ways might include, on the one end of the spectrum, “conditioned reactivity that feeds on a sense of crisis,” or on the other end of the spectrum, some form of repression/suppression.  Effective ways to deal with trauma include moving into, feeling and releasing the energy of it and/or stepping back and getting a perspective on the event in such a way that we're not identifying with or repressing the emotions, physiological responses, etc. associated with the event.  What you describe as “conditioned reactivity that feeds on a sense of crisis” is simply an ineffective way to deal with a trauma that might amplify the effects of it (for instance, adopting a victim narrative or creating unnecessary interpersonal drama) rather than allowing it to dissipate.  The solution is not to then repress or minimize the impact of the experience, but rather to move out of conditioned reactivity and into more authentic relationship with it, which will then allow the energy of it to dissipate naturally and allow us to integrate the experience in a healthy way.

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Thanks Tely, 

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What I fascinating and inspiring is that people do live through such extremely traumatic experiences.  I remember a long time ago being inspired by Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Fankl, about his experiences in the Nazi death camps (doesn't get much worse than that, does it?)  From the wikipedia article (Oct. 14, 2008 6:51 p.m.):

Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a faith in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that faith, he is doomed.

In Bosnia, Ensler met women who were forced to deal with the aftermath of war, and it was their stories that inspired her. “It was their community, their holding on to love, their insane humanity in the face of catastrophe, their staggering refusal to have or seek revenge,” Ensler writes, “that fueled me and ultimately moved me to write this play.”

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I think it is the ego that looks at experience and “cooks up and hands over to us as a tragedy” and also looks at experience and deems it to be not tragedy.  I think we have to be careful with these types of distinction-making, dualistic labels and categorizations, which, regardless of their directionality (“not tragedy” or “tragedy”), are ultimately more about personal (or collective) storytelling than Reality.

Our minds love to create and play with linear, dualistic categories such as “tragedy” or “not tragedy.”  That's fine, and these types of categorizations can be convenient sometimes, but let's not buy into these distinctions as being anything more than a very partial, 2-dimensional rendering of a reality that's far bigger and more inclusive than anything than or minds could conceive of.  So whether we choose to call something a “tragedy” or “not tragedy,” let's not forget that these labels are not a very good rendering of reality – they're just some stories we're playing with.  So with that, let's not hold onto them too tightly.  Because that type of contracting would surely be … um … a tragedy!  ;-)

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Just in case anyone was wondering….dinner was still kick-ass, even with the accident and two beers. ; )

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Thanks, Jenn. It might have been because of the two beers.

Liz

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Jen, Maybe that is the most beautiful thing about all of this….that the dinner and the beers were delicious! Thanks for the reminder!

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I have been considering this thread, even the idea of what a 'premonition' is, and the fact that 'something-something' has really triggered something-something in me. 

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Hi, Jane.  In reading this post, I think I'm starting to see where we might converge around this issue (yay – I love it when that happens!), but also where we diverge.

I was trying to understand what you mean but primary and secondary insults, and I think I get it.  Here's how I would describe it in my words.  We can have a trauma, and then on top of that, we can create a story (which can often look like a victim narrative).  The story tends to be fairly dramatic and can certainly talk a lot about feelings, but there's no real resolution, because the feelings aren't actually experienced – they're folded into a story, with good guys, bad guys, tragedies, etc. which allows an intellectual but not experiential awareness of feelings.  It's one step removed from the actual trauma.  If I'm understanding you correctly, what you're calling the primary insult would be the trauma, and what you're calling the secondary insult would be the story we create about the trauma.  The story doesn't lead to resolution, and in fact, it only amplifies and dramatizes our distress.

IMO, the story is a misguided attempt at attending to the trauma, but it's a bit removed by virtue of having the feelings become encased in its narrative, so the person stays stuck.  And people don't do this consciously.  The stories are people's best attempts at processing a wound, but the stories themselves create a defense to actually experiencing the feelings from the wound, thereby blocking resolution even while attempting resolution.

Now, here's where I think you are I diverge.  A couple times in this thread, you've endorsed a “stiff upper lip” as a way of dealing with trauma, and I think a stiff upper  is just one more way of blocking resolution from a trauma.  Blockages to resolving a trauma happen at two seemingly divergent poles.  One is when a person represses/dissociates from their pain (e.g., “a stiff upper lip”).  The energy is blocked and can't run its natural course, then dissipate.  The other pole is when a person identifies with their pain (e.g., creating a victim story).  This too, blocks the energy, so that it can't run its natural course, then dissipate.  Although these seem like two opposite ways of dealing with trauma, what they have in common is that they block the movement of energy – one by taking a rigid “no” position towards it, and one by taking a rigid “yes” position.  Healthier ways of dealing with trauma, as I stated in an earlier post, “include moving into, feeling and releasing the energy of it and/or stepping back and getting a perspective on the event in such a way that we're not identifying with or repressing the emotions, physiological responses, etc. associated with the event.”

If I'm reading you correctly, what you're reacting most strongly to is people creating stories about their trauma, and those stories are not the actual trauma.  But what I'm reacting to about what you're reacting to is that I don't think when we are caught in a story, we should try to develop a “stiff upper lip” to deal with it, since that just adds one more layer of defense/removal from the original trauma, making it even less likely that we'll reach a resolution.  I think that if we just outright invalidate or dismiss these stories, we're missing a valuable opening for healing.  When we're caught in a story, the best thing to do is to use the story as an entry point into looking at what's really trying to be expressed – going underneath the narrative and into the actual experience of the feelings.  Then we can get the energy moving and start the resolution process.

The problem with saying that something is not a “real” trauma or tragedy is that we throw the baby out with the bathwater.  What we can do, instead, is try to discern what is the overlayer of the trauma – the story.  And then, rather than dismissing it, we dive underneath it to the authentic pain that does need our attention.  In this way, rather than fueling our story (the “not trauma” or “secondary insult”), we use it as a guide to understand where we need to enter more deeply and authentically to begin our healing.

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Well said Tely,

I couldn't agree with you more!.

Goodness we have such complex and devious minds, which love to take us away from our reality.

Best

Clare

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Tely, We are coming together on this….and you have been beautifully eloquent. We can process primary insults into stories or 'no go zones' with invisible fences all around them, and our stories and our 'no go zones' create their own momentum for how we travel through our lives. 

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Thomas Moore writes:  “to sustain an ending–a soul death–without the defenses of blame, explanation, or resolution allows the soul to achieve the new level of existence that only initiation offers.”…..”Taking anger deep within, making its qualities of strength and intensity a constant element of character, a steeling of one's heart, constitutes a significant initiation of the soul, one that is necessary for an intimate relationship with another.”   It is in this sense, that I am talking about having the mettle to live consciously through the ups and downs of life with integrity.

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Thomas Moore writes:  “to sustain an ending–a soul death–without the defenses of blame, explanation, or resolution allows the soul to achieve the new level of existence that only initiation offers.”…..”

As I've been reading recent posts in this thread I've been thinking that if you can stay with the pain of unbearable loss or trauma, then it can really “kill” you - not in a physical death sense, but in a “broken open to God” (or What-Really-Matters) sense.  Of course, most people won't be able to stay with that intensity and let it burn them down to the Ground, but if you can, it might unlock the key to everything.

spiral out,
Arthur

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Yes!

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I so appreciate the work the two of you are doing here.

Julie

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Red boots?

I am of course assuming you've bought a red scooter because that's the colour in the pretty picture!

Julie x

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Black boots. Yellow helmet…it's all tragically mismatched. But designed for maximum visibility. I rode it around the block this morning. Wow, what a blast! I can't wait to be legal.

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Bootiful!!!!

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wow, that is hot!  You're hot!  How fast can you go?

Re: Straight up premonition

She is, isn't she?

I gave up driving when I moved to Vancouver in the early 1990's, for a variety of reasons including environmental concerns.  Vancouver has an excellent transit system, relatively speaking, so it was pretty easy to do.  Sacramento?  Not so much.  It's been somewhat inconvenient not having a driver's license here (and having let that skill decay for the past 16 years) – but I didn't want to drive again until I had access to a zero-emission vehicle.  Now that we have one, I have no excuse not to study the damn manual, take the test etc.

Once that's taken care of, not only will I feel all virtuous and shit, but I'll also be able to finally do this:


(XKCD)

snicker out,
Arthur (the lucky bastard married to the hot biker babe)