I experience the flow state.

When contemplating the flow state during driving, I

immediately think about a recent trip with my mom and sister to the Ardennes, a
forest region in Belgium and Luxembourg, extending into France and Germany, with
hills, ridges, and rivers, only a few hours away from the flatlands I come from.
When you’re used to everything being as flat as a pancake, because that’s what’s
happening in most of the Netherlands, driving in the hills is a slightly different
ballgame. The first thing I noticed is that my car responds differently to going up
a mountain compared to descending one, which is the most basic physics. However,
for some reason, it startled the Dutch operating system in my brain, which has no
software installed dealing with elevations in its environment. This was my baptism
of fire. My first time driving abroad on a different terrain. At the beginning of
the trip, I felt slightly anxious. I was about to expand my comfort zone. I tried
to plan, analyze, and sort out all possible scenarios in my head. I wanted to
impress my mother and sister with my driving skills. I was a bit worried about the
Belgian roads that are notoriously bad and about not understanding the traffic
rules of our Southern neighbors. So, I was driving and driving, passing the city of
Eindhoven, crossing the Limburg province, toward the border when dark clouds,
thunder, and lightning began to appear all around us. It was raining cats, dogs,
Democrats, Republicans, and Eurosceptics. I could barely see the driver before me,
let alone check what was happening a hundred meters ahead. My baptism of fire
became a baptism of lousy weather and a ridiculously chaotic highway. I remember
that that moment pushed me into the present. I had no choice other than to ignore
all discursive thoughts and drive. I stopped trying to drive well and just drove
well without even intending to drive well. This sounds paradoxical because it is.
When my desire to drive well ceased, I actually began to drive well. What started
as this overanalyzing galore of desperation became an effortless and unexpectedly
delightful experience. Mountain sights and curling highways came and went; cars and
trucks overtook me, and I overtook them as if we were bees, a swarm sharing a
common conscience, almost as if something greater than ourselves diligently
orchestrated the spectacle of traffic driving between Liège and Namur. Oh, and the
Belgian roads were pretty good, especially in the Ardennes.