Saturday, July 15, 2006

New Wheels

Well, I found a replacement for my dear old 1985 Honda Accord. I will be picking up a 2000 Subaru Outback wagon either this afternoon or on Monday. I will miss my old car -- it has served me well these past 8 years, but after its journey of over 235,000 miles (although only about 70,000 of them were under my charge) it is running out of steam.

It is funny how we get used to things. I will probably miss even the less ideal things about it, like the dings in the passenger side door, the glitch in the blower fan, and the plastic moulding around the inside that was gradually coming undone. Things that we use everyday can gradually come to feel like an extension of ourselves. Comfortable, familiar.

Even though the replacement will be "better", it is hard not to be at least a little sad, and even to feel like a bit of a traitor for replacing it. In a sense this is only the first in what will be a number of goodbyes.

Leaving Lincoln will be very similar -- leaving the comfortable and familiar for the new and unknown. There is one part of me that embraces the new with a sense of adventure and excitement, but another the mourns losing the old and resists change. The part of me that resists change and views it as loss instead of gain feels stronger at the present moment.