RIGHT TURNS AND LEFT TURNS

There is a new steering wheel cover on my car. We got it so that the chill of the steering wheel would not penetrate my gloves and render my fingers blue and numb. It works!

The steering wheel cover in not all that thick but it is of a fleecy variety that has a definite nap to it. Run my hands clockwise around it and it is wonderfully smooth. Counterclockwise scruffy. SO.. when making right hand turns the wheel slides smoothly back through my hand rendering the cover sleek and silky. Left hand turns -- not so much -- scruffy and not pretty.

My routine trips are just that, routine round trips. Out from home and back again. Now one would assume that these routine trips would include an equal number of right turns and left turns. Decidedly not. There are just more left turns in my life than right turns. Or so it would seem.

It was only a few days of this smooth/scruffy experience for me to figure out the right turn/left turn thing. And, of course, being me, I pondered on these things. Could I equate this experience to right turn/wrong turn. Wrong is so much more obvious than right. Perhaps it was the obvious that was apparent. This thinking led me further -- are there unequal right turns and wrong turns of life. And further, am I making more wrong ones than right ones? And even further -- how would I know?

This kind of thinking happens to me a lot. I seem to turn the simplest of circumstances into broad psychological/theological/ethical reasoning. Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes not. But it will always be. As I get older, however, I would like to be eliminating the wrong turns in my life.

I will continue to ponder on these things.

Lent is upon us.