> So there you go, no matter really what I do, I will always live if fear
> of being let in the dust by a Midget with an A series.
There's *so much* in this topic that it's hard to pick where to start.
So imagine that this is a hypertext Zen garden, with a rock, patterns
in the gravel, a stand of bamboo, a stone lantern, a juniper. Order
and sequence are imposed by the limits of human intelligence on the
unity of the universe; read these as you like.
You can make a car into something it's not, but you can't make it
into something it can't be. If what you really want is something
that your car can't be for fundamental reasons, then maybe it's
time to get another car. Or other desires, depending on how you
feel about that car.
Feelings follow actions.
Fear of your car's comparison to another person's car is a wild,
expensive, and ultimately futile folly. There will always be faster
cars than yours, if not now then one day. If you are dissatisfied
with your car so you make it faster, you will only have a faster
car with which you are eventually even more dissatisfied after
having spent time and money on it.
Keeping a car that isn't what you want and can't be what you want it
to be is a long-term path to misery. It's so tempting to think that
you can fix it, you can improve it, you can make it better; but if
you have to do this, it's often easier to get something that does
what you want in the first place. This is part of the Do versus Be
dichotomy -- if you love a car because of what it Is, then it doesn't
matter what it does. If you love a car only because of what it Does,
then you have no qualms about replacing it with a car that Does what
you want but Does it better.
Performance is the ultimate test of Do versus Be. When you reach
the limit of the performance envelope of the car, you have to face
the fact that there comes a point where it can Do no more than it
can Do. You then have to decide whether to keep it because of what
it Is or get another car that can Do what you want.
Do and Be are the same thing. What the car Does affects the physical
emotions. What the car Is affects the mental emotions. The car is
the same, no matter what you think of it; flag is not moving, wind is
not moving, only mind is moving.
The secret to happiness isn't stuff -- not more stuff, not shinier
stuff, not faster stuff, not bigger stuff, not higher-tech stuff,
not glossier stuff, not electrophoretically-primed stuff, not
radial-tuned gas-charged stuff. The secret to happiness is happiness.
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