Windshields. - by Stargirl.

Windshields. What comes to your mind when you hear the word? The wind? A car? An actual windshield? Your failed dreams of owning a car now? Or perhaps you have a car now. Is it a Lexus or a legzus? A Honda or a wonder? How mobile are you? Do you move with your legs or with a car? Or is the only movement you do the scrolling you do on TikTok, moving from one video to another with the speed of lightning, stopping only when something sufficiently interesting catches your attention? It is a lie that you are bereft of motion. You move on TikTok and X and TwoCents. You move through people's opinions, people's lives, people's pictures and people's carefully arranged evidence of progress. You have motion. It is just not the kind your mother recognizes. Last week, someone walked up to me and called me broke. I smiled because they had not seen my TwoCents balance. I might be broke in real life, but I am rich on TwoCents. How would they know? I do not know. Perhaps they had measured my wealth by the things they could see, which is a very convenient way of measuring wealth when you are not interested in the things you cannot see. So I told them about TwoCents, and they told me they were too busy pursuing more important things to bother with futile endeavours like reading and writing on TwoCents. Futile. I am a woman of little means and giant goals, and I have always found it interesting that people can look at a thing they do not understand and decide that it is useless. Perhaps writing looks futile when you are waiting for a car to prove that you are moving. Perhaps reading looks like wasted time when everyone around you is busy running somewhere. Maybe that is the problem. We have decided that motion must look like motion. A person gets a car, we say they are moving forward. Someone gets a better job, we say they are progressing. Someone relocates, gets married, buys a house, starts a business, acquires a title, and suddenly their life has become a map with several destinations boldly ticked off. But what about the person who has spent the last six months reading? What about the person writing things nobody has paid for yet? What about the person learning something that will not make sense to anybody until three years later? What about the person who has not gone anywhere because they have been trying to become somebody? Are they moving? I suppose that depends on who is looking through the windshield. Now back, back. Windshields. What is a windshield? The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of— Lol. What are you saying? “A windshield blocks the rain from hitting the car.” “Good. Good.” Is that it? Is that all a windshield is? Something between you and the rain while you move? What is order, anyway? Why was I born? Why do we insist on giving everything a definition before we permit ourselves to understand it? Why does a car need a windshield, and why does a person need a reason for living? Who decided that everything must have a purpose that can be explained in a sentence? When you think of a car, do you think of the windshield first? Probably not. You think of the car. You think of the colour, the shape, the brand, the price, the person driving it, perhaps even the person you imagine you would become if you owned it. You rarely think about the glass standing between you and everything outside. Maybe, that is the point. There are things doing their work quietly enough that nobody thinks to congratulate them. Nobody sees the windshield and says, “What a beautiful job you are doing of keeping the rain away.” Nobody sees a person reading at two in the morning and says, “Look at her, she is moving.” Nobody sees the girl writing with a balance that would make her bank account laugh and says, “Look at her, she is building something.” We prefer movement when it is loud. We like engines. We like speed. We like things that can be photographed. We like progress that has receipts. Who are you, anyway? Why are you reading this? Questions are a trap. They invite you to believe that every question has an answer waiting patiently somewhere, when some questions are merely doors that open into other questions. I have discovered this about life. You can ask why and why and why until the word itself begins to sound ridiculous. Why was I born? Why did this happen? Why did they leave? Why did I survive? Why am I here? Why am I still trying? Sometimes there is no answer, you simply keep moving. And sometimes moving means nothing more impressive than getting out of bed, opening your laptop, reading another page, writing another paragraph, applying for another opportunity, trying another thing, believing that the person you are becoming is worth the inconvenience of becoming her. I lost two parents. I gained a lot of parents. I am grateful for them, but I want my two parents. Have you seen a child with three mothers and a father? You might have seen one with one mother and three fathers. But the mathematics of grief does not work that way. You cannot add people to replace people. You can gain love without recovering what you lost. You can move forward without leaving everything behind. And that is another lie we tell ourselves about motion, that moving forward means that you have stopped looking backward. I still look backward. I still remember. I still want things that cannot be returned to me. And somehow, I am still moving. Perhaps not with a Lexus or a legzus. Perhaps not with a Honda or a wonder. Perhaps not even with the kind of motion that can be seen from the roadside. But I am moving. I read. I write. I think. I dream. I scroll, sometimes more than I should. I laugh at things on TwoCents. I worry about money. I make plans with money I do not have. I carry giant goals with little means and somehow convince myself that this is a perfectly sensible way to live. Maybe it is. Maybe motion has never required a car. Maybe it only requires that you keep going, even when nobody watching through their windshield can see where you are headed. After all, the windshield glass is transparent. You can see through it. But seeing through something does not mean understanding what is happening on the other side.Okay okay.Did I make you think?.Did I confuse you? Do you want to ask why ?Why? Really?.Windshields?.

Other insights from Stargirl.

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons