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Road trips. They sound romantic, adventurous, maybe even a little nostalgic, right? Visions of open highways, curated playlists, questionable gas station snacks… pure Americana.

It is a truly Hollywood-tinted, romanticized, and slightly nostalgic view of road trips we have, as Americans.

Reality, as it often does, tends to slap a slightly damp, vaguely sticky handprint on those glossy images, though.

My recent reality involved piloting my Kia Niro [affectionately nicknamed “Chris’s Clown Car”] down I-81 from Pennsylvania to South Carolina and back again, in the span of one weekend.

The mission: Take my mother home and tackle the list of errands she had for me.

My co-pilots? My lovely, elderly mother, my energetic 9-year-old kiddo, and my equally energetic (and significantly furrier) dog.

My qualifications as pilot of the clown car? Being the only one with opposable thumbs and a driver’s license.

Joy.

The plan was simple: one epic day of driving. Push through, arrive, exhale. We’d have a whole glorious day in SC to tackle the list of errands that necessitated this multi-state trek.

Easy peasy.

Except, somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, the universe decided to laugh.

Heartily.

The annoying drizzle that had been misting us all day at lower elevations morphed, with surprising speed, into a full-blown temper tantrum of sleet and snow. The temperature plummeted. The roads, winding and suddenly treacherous, became slick canvases of potential disaster.

And I was tired.

The kind of tired that sinks into your bones after hours of hyper-vigilance, managing lane changes, mediating back-seat diplomacy (“Yes, the dog is breathing on you, try to ignore it”), and calculating fuel stops. Pushing through the mountains on increasingly icy roads, in the dark, felt less like perseverance and more like tempting fate with a carload of my favorite people [and dog].

So, I did the deeply un-heroic, schedule-destroying thing: I pulled over.

Shit.

We found a hotel, checked in, and admitted defeat to the weather.

Our one epic driving day became two.

This, of course, meant our “whole glorious day” in South Carolina evaporated. Instead, we had about six frantic hours to achieve Peak Efficiency Errand-Running before collapsing into sleep, only to get up the next morning and drive all the way back to Pennsylvania.

The return trip was, weather-wise, beautiful. Sunny skies, clear roads. But inside the car, I was the storm cloud.

Exhaustion is a heavy passenger.

Yet, there was no alternative. My kiddo is still about 7 years shy of legal operation, and, as previously established, the dog lacks the requisite thumbs.

The responsibility was still mine.

At one point on that long drive home, somewhere between state lines, my kid drifted off to sleep. She zonked out for a solid chunk of time – about 200 miles zipped by while she was dreaming. When she woke up, blinking in the sunlight of a different state, she stretched and announced, “Sleeping in the car is fun! You just close your eyes through the boring parts, and when you wake up, you’re way farther along! And you got a nap!”

Bless her heart.

And Oof.

She was right, from her passenger-seat perspective. But as the driver? I didn’t have that option. I couldn’t just check out for the monotonous stretches of highway. I certainly couldn’t nap through the icy mountain pass crisis. I had to be present, alert, engaged – steering, braking, navigating, constantly assessing, even when it was boring, even when it was stressful, even when it was downright scary.

And isn’t that just… life?

We are all, in essence, the drivers of our own lives.

Sure, we have passengers, support systems, people we rely on. But ultimately, we’re the ones with our hands on the wheel. And life, much like I-81 South in a freak snowstorm, doesn’t always stick to the itinerary. It throws curveballs, presents unexpected detours, and sometimes dumps sleet on our best-laid plans.

We don’t get to just take a nap and wake up when things get easier or more interesting.

We have to navigate the boring stretches – the mundane tasks, the daily grind. We have to steer through the storms – the illnesses, the job losses, the heartbreaks, the unexpected constitutional crises. We have to stay awake, even when we’re tired, even when we’re frustrated, even when the path forward looks slick and uncertain.

But there’s another crucial part of that driving lesson: knowing when to pull over.

My decision to stop in Virginia wasn’t quitting; it was acknowledging risk and choosing safety.

It was recognizing that pushing beyond my limits, or the limits of the conditions, wasn’t brave, it was foolish. Sometimes, the most responsible thing we can do in life is to pause, rest, seek shelter, and wait for conditions to improve or for our own strength to return.

It’s not sleeping through the problem, but strategically regrouping so we can navigate the problem safely.

This idea of staying awake, of not sleeping through the challenging parts, resonates far beyond my weekend road trip. Back in 1966, delivering the Ware Lecture to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a powerful speech titled, “Don’t Sleep Through the Revolution.”

He wasn’t just talking about getting enough rest.

He was talking about societal change, about the fight for civil rights and human dignity. He urged people not to be complacent, not to be passive observers while momentous changes and struggles were unfolding around them.

He warned against the dangers of societal slumber – of ignoring injustice, of accepting the status quo when the status quo was deeply flawed. He called on people to wake up, to be informed, to be engaged, to actively participate in shaping a better, more just world.

Think about it. 1966.

A time of immense social upheaval, challenge, and change.

Now think about today.

April 2025.

Look around.

Listen.

We are definitely not living in calm, settled times.

The political bullshit, the rise of fascism and Christian Nationalism, the ongoing struggles for racial and social justice, the environmental concerns, the rapid technological shifts – there’s a revolution happening right now, multiple revolutions actually, all intersecting and all demanding our attention.

Dr. King’s call not to sleep through the revolution feels piercingly relevant.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by it all.

It’s tempting to just want to “nap through the boring parts” – or the scary parts, or the parts that don’t directly affect us. It’s tempting to tune out the news, to avoid difficult conversations, to focus only on our immediate, comfortable bubble.

But just like I couldn’t afford to sleep on the way home from SC, we can’t afford to sleep through the challenges and changes shaping our world.

Staying awake means paying attention, educating ourselves, engaging in respectful dialogue (even when it’s hard), and finding responsible ways to contribute, however small they might seem.

It means driving with awareness, both in our personal lives and in our shared journey as a society. It also means applying that driver’s wisdom: knowing when collective action requires pushing forward and when it requires a strategic pause for reflection, healing, or regrouping.

So, the next time you feel the urge to just check out, to sleep through the difficulties, remember the view from the driver’s seat.

Remember the responsibility, the need for awareness, and the quiet strength in knowing when to navigate forward and when to safely pull over and rest before continuing the journey.

Your Turn:

Where in your life – personal or societal – might you be hitting the snooze button? What’s one small, manageable step you can take this week to be a little more “awake at the wheel”? Maybe it’s researching an issue you’ve been avoiding, having a conversation you’ve been putting off, or simply taking a mindful moment to check your own “driver fatigue” and decide whether to push on or pull over for needed rest. Let’s commit to navigating with intention. The journey depends on it.

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