[caption id=“attachment_9” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“A Nissan Patrol”]A Nissan Patrol[/caption]

On the way home tonight I dropped into Broadbeach Starbucks, more on that later, but as I left Broadbeach and got to the southern end of Surf Parade, there was a Nissan Patrol, stopped.

I’ve been slowly learning about being kind, polite, loving, all those things Jesus bangs on about in the Bible, so in respect of this teaching I sat and waited about 20 seconds until the driver realised his or her misdemeanour and snapped to it, started driving, albeit it slowly, and my journey continued.

The Patrol didn’t exactly resume ’normal’ driving though. The driver continued to test my patience and love levels by stopping again, then driving very slowly, but surprisingly as we entered the Gold Coast Highway, a two lane road for everyone watching at home, I drove off ’normally’ and ’normally’ stopped at the red light, the same red light that the Nissan Patrol sped through at a high speed.

Continuing along the highway, two traffic lights down I pulled up to the red light and saw the Nissan Patrol, thankfully stopped at the red light this time. I looked at the driver and briefly laughed internally as I looked at the driver of the 1991 Nissan Patrol, a large brutal man car, and saw a 21-ish young girl driving, with a mobile phone wedged between her right shoulder and her ear, a stressed look on her face, and a notion that she desperately just wanted to get to the end destination of a assumed difficult trip.

I laughed because I sympathised with her situation, and more so, her desire to simply reach a destination. The 5 minutes I spent with her on her journey through Broadbeach and Mermaid Beach resembled my life quite a bit. Speeding through red lights, giving way to no traffic, being lost, being given bad directions, following them, and finally stopping at red lights and going at the green ones and still not being home.

Before this whole debacle unfolded, I had dropped into Starbucks at Broadbeach. Starbucks broadie is my personal haunt of the night. Tonight got awkward thgouh, I saw someone who had expressed an interest in me, a desire to explore the possibility of a relationship, and had even put herself out there and made a move letting me know how she felt. As Will Ferrel puts it .. she wanted to be on me. :)

Like the irritating male I am, I didn’t respond to her as she would of liked, I said nothing at the time, avoided her for the appropriate length of time, then just didn’t see her for a month.

I didn’t have a problem with her, she is attractive, very nice, great personality, I just didn’t feel like she was the girl for me. I don’t really have any desire to go on a thousand dates with a thousand girls hoping to find the right one. My emotions are already messed up enough without mixing more girls to the mix. So I simply didn’t communicate with her.

I saw her tonight, and the moment she took a glance at me, as I stood in line about 4 people back, with two drunk girls and two emo girls filling the great divide between us, I knew exactly how she felt. I’ve been in her shoes before, put my whole heart on the line, only to have it ignored, smashed or the worst one: wrenched and twisted. It sucks, you bet all you’ve got then walk home with nothing.

So after an awkward conversation with her, a hilarious glance from the other barista who knew the whole story and a Grande Signature Hot Chocolate on skinny soy milk, I moved along quickly as ‘The Casual Projects’ would recommend doing (reference to song lyrics in the song “Move Along”). Back in the warmth of my car, and the comfort of my own company.

So, I’m sure everyone is asking how a Nissan Patrol changed my life.

I’ve had this notion somehow from when I was a child, that we were always somehow, someday hoping to reach the point of completion of whatever it is we are currently doing, and it would be a day of celebration, the Mayor or maybe even the Prime Minister would come along and make a speech, and then everything would be ok.

But it seems, after 26.5 years of hard yakka, that this quite possibly might not happen, and this thing I experience every day as I wake up, we call it ’life’, might be a journey of significant length, perhaps not a quick 100m sprint that I hoped it was.

At the thought of this I felt so wrong and disappointed with myself that I almost straightened my hair, wore all my black clothes, got out my Kisschasy CD and bought some weird coloured knee length socks.

So, having not turned emo, I thought as we travel this journey of life, running red lights and stopping at intersections for no particular reason, holding up journeymen and journeywomen behind us, in general having no idea what on earth we are doing at all, despite the libraries being full of great books and having friends and family that seem to just have the answer to everything, maybe we’re not as wrong as we feel. You might of noticed the change from I to we, that’s right, I’ve dragged you into this now.

Collectively as a race of people we’re more intelligent and rich than ever before, yet more depressed and hard up than we’ve ever felt and I know that more than often we feel wrong. We feel like we’ve made a mistake, or we’ve made a boo boo, an error or a royal stuff up.

I’ve been there … just today I’ve stuffed up at least three times … possibly four, Ash Punch and Jon King can fill you in on the details I’m sure, but the truth is that the friendships and relationships I have here on earth and the grace of God that I receive from heaven quite simply mops up everything I’ve done wrong, all the red lights I’ve ran today on today’s journey, and all the other driving mishaps, its all gone after today, and tomorrow, thank God, is a new day.

So as a Nissan Patrol did to me today, let me do the same to you, and encourage you to fight the good fight and run the good race, and let it be known that you are on a journey that quite possibly could go right to the end of your life and quite possibly even after, although along the journey you will sometimes pickup a hitchhiker or drop someone off and sometimes you’ll even pull in somewhere for a little longer than normal, it is still a journey, and God put you on it to enjoy it and enjoy it to the full.

Summary for the page skimmers: Life=Journey