41. Alignment

Back to the potholes. One of the things one considers when one hits the mother of all potholes, once the tire is replaced, how's the alignment?

Alignment. Something that can be so way off that it's obvious - we are pulled to the right or pulled towards the left - politics being a great macrocosm example of this, or the misalignment can be subtle. So subtle that it takes driving on your tire for thousands of miles in order for the wear pattern to present itself. Again like life. These subtle misalignments in our lives are seemingly non-issues, until one day, when we start to notice that something is "off,"  ie - my back is out, my knee hurts, I have a headache, every time I talk with so-and-so i feel like dog doo doo afterwards, etc...  Sometimes we even miss the these seemingly obvious little clues, that may seem grotesquely obvious to our friends and family, and it takes getting hit over the head, or hitting the mother of all potholes, to wake the Eff up! This can look like your spouse filing for divorce, you've lost your job, you have disc degeneration, or manifestations even larger than that. I'm sure you can think of one on your own.

But the cool thing is that if your alignment is solid, hitting that pothole may just result in hitting the pothole - a blown tire. In the grand scheme of things, not that big of a deal. This is tantamount to have one of the pothole moments, and not laying a whole dramatic trip on the situation. In life, this might play itself out as "so and so criticized me for not doing the dishes." That pothole may sting, but no big deal. Or we can go down this road: "I know he is judging me which is so like the way my dad used to treat me when I was little and it makes me feel like I'm 5 years old and I'm embarrassed and ashamed for not knowing better, no wait, for messing up AGAIN like I always do, you see, i told you I'm a worthless piece of shit and don't deserve love so you might as well divorce me and to protect myself i'm not going to talk with you for 5 days, or maybe even go off and have a tantrum bringing up all of your faults that I judge you for because you made me feel bad about myself so I'm going to make sure you are miserable too and forget having sex for the next month and in fact we need marriage counseling because you just don't understand me at all or give me a break for not fulfilling your outrageous expectations!"

Misalignment.

Now at the beginning of this tirade, notice that what our protaganist  heard was "so and so criticized me for not doing the dishes," when in fact so and so might have simply said, "we're out of clean spoons."

The good news is, when aligned, you hear "we're out of clean plates." So the pothole then becomes a mere tire job. Change the tire, and we're good to go.

Alignment. Not a problem. It was perfect and was a good checkup because the other 3 tires were almost bald.

And I have plenty of spoons right now.

Perfect.