I have returned to the wonderful world of Lawrence ahead of schedule. Well, at least ahead of schedule in days, but way the fuck late in timewise for today's schedule. I'm just grateful I've arrived at all.
Best thing about this Christmas: Tons of KU gear and a new motorcycle jacket that I was wanting, plus a $9000 money order that isn't technically a present but still is nice to have going into the bank tomorrow.
Worst thing about this Christmas: My trip home. It was going swimmingly, as it usually is when I'm coming back from the hellhole that is SW KS, until I was about 4 miles West of Salina, KS on I-70. I'm flying along at about 75 MPH when I hear a very loud BANG. At first I have no idea what it is until I suddenly feel my car start to pull, nay, yank to the right with a determination usually reserved for a fat man at an all you can eat buffet. In the span of a nano-second I realized "Shit, I blew a tire" and immediately turned the wheel towards the way it was pulling in a desperate attempt to keep myself from rolling the rest of the way home, which I was sure was going to happen as I fel the back wheels lift up a bit. However, by the grace of Sonny Crockett, I somehow made a smooth 180 degree turn as if I had full control and, without even realizing I was doing it, put the car in reverse and backed onto the shoulder about 2 seconds before the truck that was frantically trying to stop sped by me.
So, near death experiences, 2 hour waits for roadside assistance, a 2 more hour wait for the new tires that were needed after my Miami Vice driving school experience, and 3 hours later, I'm home and not dead. Guess that's something to be thankful for, huh?
Best thing about this Christmas: Tons of KU gear and a new motorcycle jacket that I was wanting, plus a $9000 money order that isn't technically a present but still is nice to have going into the bank tomorrow.
Worst thing about this Christmas: My trip home. It was going swimmingly, as it usually is when I'm coming back from the hellhole that is SW KS, until I was about 4 miles West of Salina, KS on I-70. I'm flying along at about 75 MPH when I hear a very loud BANG. At first I have no idea what it is until I suddenly feel my car start to pull, nay, yank to the right with a determination usually reserved for a fat man at an all you can eat buffet. In the span of a nano-second I realized "Shit, I blew a tire" and immediately turned the wheel towards the way it was pulling in a desperate attempt to keep myself from rolling the rest of the way home, which I was sure was going to happen as I fel the back wheels lift up a bit. However, by the grace of Sonny Crockett, I somehow made a smooth 180 degree turn as if I had full control and, without even realizing I was doing it, put the car in reverse and backed onto the shoulder about 2 seconds before the truck that was frantically trying to stop sped by me.
So, near death experiences, 2 hour waits for roadside assistance, a 2 more hour wait for the new tires that were needed after my Miami Vice driving school experience, and 3 hours later, I'm home and not dead. Guess that's something to be thankful for, huh?
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The western version of the idea is the province of performance psychology.
Here is a book on the topic. You were totally in a flow state when you drove out of the way of the semi. So it's not that you acted beyond yourself, in reality, you acted at the peak of yourself.
From The Evolving Self by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
Over and over again, as people describe how it feels when they thoroughly enjoy themselves, they mention eight distinct dimensions of experience. These same aspects are reported by Hindu yogis and Japanese teenagers who race motorcycles, by American surgeons and basketball players, by Australian sailors and Navajo shepherds, by champion figure skaters and by chess masters. These are the characteristic dimensions of the flow experience:
1. Clear goals: an objective is distinctly defined; immediate feedback: one knows instantly how well one is doing.
2. The opportunities for acting decisively are relatively high, and they are matched by one's perceived ability to act. In other words, personal skills are well suited to given challenges.
3. Action and awareness merge; one-pointedness of mind.
4. Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli disappear from consciousness, worries and concerns are temporarily suspended.
5. A sense of potential control.
6. Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego boundaries, a sense of growth and of being part of some greater entity.
7. Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass faster.
8. Experience becomes autotelic: If several of the previous conditions are present, what one does becomes autotelic, or worth doing for its own sake.