I drive an old BMW. Only it’s new to me. We bought it from a dealer a few months ago. It’s 8 years old with about 100,000 miles on it. Why did I do this? Oh, do I really have to go into that? I bought it because it goes VROOM VROOM VROOM when I step on the pedal. Do I really need another reason?

Anyhow, this Beemer has some electrical problems. That sounds negative, so I’ll just do like we do in corporate land and refer to them as electrical concerns. Electrical issues. The little panel that’s supposed to tell me if there’s something wrong with the car has some bulbs missing. So when I’m driving with the trunk lid open, it flashes “TRIIIIK LID OIIN” which I can pretty much decipher, but sometimes it’s just a one-word warning, like “IIDIIII” and I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Today I hit a bump and a little triangle that looked like a nuclear bomb symbol flashed for a split second –a sign of the apocalypse, or at least, engine failure?

So here I’m going to make some big fat metaphor about how driving is like life and the little flashing messages seem to be like garbled signs from God. For instance, I ask God for direction and I meet an old friend and she tells me how happy she is being a teacher and I think, huh, maybe it’s a sign from God that I should be a teacher, but then I think about it for a while and decide, nah, I don’t want to do that, and so, was it a real sign or just a little flashing light that I don’t need to pay much attention to?

If I’m driving down the road and a symbol for a burning bush pops up on my dashboard, I’ll let you know. Only with all those bulbs missing, it’ll probably look like a squid. Or a tiny little oil spill.