The Three Instincts

Money, power, and sex, indeed.

I left the meeting this morning and drove to a nearby gas station.  I have a leak in one of the rear tires on my Very Expensive Car.  Needless to say - the tires are also very expensive.  Everything on this car is very expensive.  The idea was to fill the gas tank and then top off my leaking tire.  One would think that a better idea might be to replace the fucking tire instead of driving around topping it off, bit by bit, worrying whether or not today will be the day when the leaking tire will be all leaked out, but then one would be wrong.

I found the air pressure on the air pump system to be suspect.  Indeed, when I tried to fill the tire it seemed to me that air was exiting the tire rather than entering it.  Indeed, when I got back into the car the automatic tire pressure monitoring system - god only knows what that feature cost me - indicated that the tire had less air in it than before.  At this point I should note that a few months back I took the car into a tire store and had the tire repaired - it held air for a short while but was back to its old tricks in no time at all.  I also let them put nitrogen into the tire instead of air for a $5 premium.  I don't recall what advantage was purported to accrue from this move but suffice it to say that all of the $5 nitrogen is long gone, vanished into the atmosphere, replaced with ordinary air pump air, which is also vanishing regularly.  I should also note that I use this particular gas station because they provide air for free instead of asking me to put 75 cents worth of quarters into a slot that activates an air pump.

I then drove to another gas station which I found charged $1.50 to use their system.  This was unacceptable so I drove across the street to another gas station where the system also required a $1.50 donation.  Still unacceptable but now I'm getting annoyed.  I pull out and enter the freeway, headed for a fourth gas station that I know that also provides free air.  I figure I've burned up $4 worth of gas at this point.  My Very Expensive Car gets shitty gas mileage.

The air pressure system at this gas station also seemed suspect.  In a implausible turn of events it, too, drained air from my leaking tire, triggering a Flat Tire warning on the car.

At this point I simply sat in my car for while.  We talk in The Fellowship about the Three Great Instincts: Money, Power, and Sex.  Or the Three Esses if you will: Sex, Security, Society.  While I've made great progress on all three of these it's apparent to everyone that a great amount of work still remains.  It's apparent to me that when I get moving forward with too much speed that I burn up a lot of energy foolishly.

The fifth gas station charged me $1.50 to fill up my tire.  I was happy to pay.

"We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves."