TAKE THE DOORS OFF

MORE than a metaphor but ALSO a metaphor for life, in the JEEP community, aficionados take the doors off their Wranglers to get closer to nature.  Next time you drive down the highway in your car, looking at the world through the windshield, surrounded on all sides by glass and steel, try to think about the difference between experiencing the world this way and the world you get by watching TV. For me, they are both two dimensional with all of my senses dulled.  With TV you get electronic sound, usually from 5 watt speakers, a flat screen which is still flat even if you simulate 3-D, and no smells or tastes unless you have a bowl of chips in front of you.  The same goes for the enclosed car.  In nature, you get all the sounds and smells, both good and bad, you feel the wind and the temperature and it is all in 3 dimensions.  There is depth to the world.

When you are out at dinner and you toast with glasses or wine, you clink them together.  Do you know why? You can see the wine, smell the wine, taste the wine, and with the "clink" you hear something too.  It completes the sensory experience.  Why go through life in other areas incompletely savoring the moment? Sure, it is comfortable watching MTV in the comfort of your media room with its nearby bathroom, but can it compare with being in the front row of  a rock and roll concert?  Or being at the game on the 50 yard line?  Some of these things may be impractical because they are so expensive compared to picking up the remote, but if we do that in everything because we don't want to leave the comfort zone or have some other rationalization,  our lives will be 2 dimensional.  Why not just look at a picture of a glass of wine? Facebook is not real life.

Take the doors off, fold down the windshield and start living in a 3-D world, and I mean the real one, not the one Steven Speilberg sells.