[Note: In a previous essay I wrote about the Sikh perspective that All is Divine, and how it shaped my observations and experiences while traveling in Spain. I experienced divinity in three elements—in nature, in people, and in moments. Below is one of those moments, on the rooftop of a parking garage at the Ibiza airport in search of a rental car]
We rented a car in Ibiza. When we are in Spain, the rental car is both a logistical necessity and a space-maker for thoughtful conversation. We need a way to reach the secluded Spanish beaches--calas--and, in the moments in between the calas, the car is a ripe environment for rich conversation. It is both a mode of transport to reach our destinations and the destination itself. In the car we rifle through an endless world of music. Sunlight floods the dash. Warm air spills in through the open windows. Coke zeros and an indulgent pack of cigarettes are in arm’s reach. Shoes are off and sand is all over the floor. I occasionally speed and take hairpin turns too tight, but the rhythm of the car is otherwise smooth and soothing. The passing of time feels melancholic. Around each turn is a view that can shift one’s perspective.
On the drives we talk about life. We consider, examine and wonder. We think big and small. We toss out new ideas, building atop the good and discarding the bad. We give ourselves credit and hold ourselves accountable. We ask questions that often have no answers. We practice our ability to say I don’t know. We learn more about one other. And, through listening, maybe we learn more about ourselves.
I once heard a profound question:
“What is something someone couldn’t pay you a billion dollars to not do?”
I couldn’t go without these drives, or at least the conversations we have on them. They are champagne for the spirit and electricity for the soul.
So yeah, we kind of need a rental car.
But the day we arrived in Ibiza, the rental car company had “accidentally given away” our car. Their words. We laughed. We have it so good in America. If we still wanted a car today, the new price was now, funny enough, three times the original cost. Makes sense. Or come back tomorrow, they offered. Mañana. Why today when there is always mañana? A tourist island has its own unspoken rules of supply and demand. It is at once maddening and refreshingly provincial. We were being swindled by a micro-economy far from home. Our passports were stamped over an hour ago but now, with the attempted price gouging, we had finally arrived.
We returned to the airport the next day. Our car was now available. We slogged through two hours of bureaucratic conversations with three different associates, each presenting another layer of corporate friction for us to hack through. Whether the byproduct of Spanish socialist inefficiency, or a semi-clever attempt to grind us for more money, we waded through the process in the airport terminal. We were then asked to go to “the next counter” to pick up the keys. The next counter? On the roof of the parking garage, they said. The parking garage? The one across the street, they said. The counter inside the terminal didn’t have our keys, they explained. Of course. How naive of us to assume so. The counter on the roof would have the keys, they assured us. It was just a quick walk away, they promised. A Spanish Easter egg hunt.
We walked across the street and to the top of the parking garage. Atop it was another rental car office--this one a single counter made of flimsy taupe plastic beneath a dirty overhang--queuing with another line of tourists. The associates behind the counter were in absolutely no hurry, and the throngs of confused European tourists certainly did not help to speed anything up. Papers lay strewn across the counter. Associates idled behind the counter, smiling and talking to one another, unaware of, or unconcerned with, those in need of their rental car. There were far too many associates behind the counter to justify a line this long. Weary travelers took selfies and held their phones to the sky in search of cell service, as if those extra 18 inches of arm extension would at last make contact with the elusive 5G. One woman re-applied her airplane neck pillow and closed her eyes standing up. Many lit cigarettes, blowing plumes of restless smoke atop the hot concrete parking garage in an already steamy Spanish Sunday morning. Occasionally an associate brought around a car or two. They rolled down the window, waved a paper ticket in the air and shouted out a reservation number in their best English as they slowly drove the car forward into the herd of confused tourists. The whole operation was a zoo. Free-market capitalism would sand away this inefficiency without remorse.
We watched the sun drift across the sky. We were less and less patient, both of us now beginning to gnaw at the visible passing of time. Funny how we notice the minutes but often miss the years. Every evening in Spain is a chance for a sublime sunset experience. Our opportunity cost grew with each passing moment.
After a slow thirty minutes in line, Omar reached the front. We have been directed here by the airport counter to retrieve the keys, he says. The keys. Of course. Customers need keys to drive the car. The associate seems surprised that we needed the keys. He begins to sift through the contents atop the counter, moving the messy strew of papers everywhere like a child smearing paint on a wall. No cigar. He opens and closes the drawers beneath the counter and the shelves behind the desk. Nothing there. He runs his hands over all four pockets of his jeans. Nothing. He cannot seem to find the keys. Any keys. He disappears into a back room. A puzzling amount of time passes. The sun continues to drift.
The associate returns. Sir I am sorry. He confesses. I cannot at the moment locate the keys. His eyes continue to scan the desk counter, avoiding eye contact with Omar’s growing look of incredulous disbelief. He pauses. The movement of his eyes across the messy counter slow to a halt and rise to meet Omar’s. His eyes expand, big as golf balls. He appears on the cusp of an epiphany. He looks up at Omar.
“Sir, do you have the keys?”
We laughed all day. And for days after. Do you have the keys? It became the slogan of the trip.
Over dinner on our final night, we reflected on the trip. Do you have the keys was a unanimous highlight, we strongly agreed. Though not the standard fare of a view, a meal, an adventure or a profound conversation, its brilliance lay in its unscripted hilarity. Frustration-turned-outrageous-comedic-joy. A moment of levity, stumbled upon in an otherwise maddening situation. Humor pulled the tension out of the hot air. Levity turned the day from what it was to what it could now become. An inflection point. How wonderful humor can be when it helps us turn the page.
We paused to consider how much time, money and effort we--Omar and I, and humanity broadly--spend planning the big moments in our lives, and yet so often the sweetest, richest, most sensory experiences come in the small ones--in the spontaneous, the random, the unplanned, the in-between-the-cracks moments of living. The energy in these small moments is often unexpected; we travel across Spain in search of magic--sunsets, seaside meals, profound perspective shifts--only to have it surprise us atop a steamy bureaucratic roof of a parking garage. When the small moments suddenly ripen, they leave our stomachs sore from laughter and our hearts full of awe--in awe of the truth that what we search for in the grand canvas of existence is actually right here in front of us.
Moments of magic hiding in plain sight.
Divinity in all moments.