My Jetta

My most valuable possession (in terms of net dollar worth) is dying. Little imperfections are accumulating on my '05 Jetta. It's very, very saddening. Its days of beauty are slipping fast away, and recapturing them is basically not a possible reality anymore. Inside the driver door, the cloth has come loose, probably because my friend's mom who graciously offered to give my car's interior a deep-clean two years ago scrubbed the fabric too hard. The front bumper I had replaced this January is an off-shade of the off-white of the rest of the body; I didn't notice this then because I picked it up late one night where the eve concealed it (smart, I know). The back bumper is not pretty either, now, because where I had it repaired four years ago, the paint has micro-shattered beneath the glossy surface, so that it looks like cracked desert dirt, and there are two scratches all the way down to the black underneath (where on earth did these come from? I wonder if someone hit-and-ran me recently- had to have, right?). The passenger door no longer opens from the outside, even when I unlock it (the result of my minor wreck this past summer, which insurance didn't bother to fix). This all makes me very sad!

 I just need to remember how much of a blessing this car has been, for five years now! I love that it's a stick, that it's 4-door, that it's super fuel-efficient, and has rarely had mechanical problems. It fits my personality ("quick and zippy," as C.B. astutely observed!). I think I might like my next car to also be a VW.

Anyhow, the deeper moral of this story, to link it to the spiritual realm, is: even our prettiest acquisitions in life always change. They do not remain in tip-top shape forever. This is the natural result of entropy in the natural world, a natural process. And if it's a natural process, is it too much to infer that there is something we ought to catch onto as humans in it, as in, how do we respond to the natural tendency of things? The lesson within this might be that constant care over the long haul is the best way to maintain our valued things (and also relationships with loved ones). Don't let the bangs and brokenness accumulate to a point where correcting them seems insurmountable!