Religious Transcendence via Hubcap Replacement
Counteracting dysfunction and finding wholeness with proper play
The Curiosity That Lies Beneath Overwhelm
Currently, I live in a rather small town – less than 2000 people total, if that – to the west of West Appalachia. Because of this, if I want to eat at a higher quality, non-fast food restaurant I have to drive to the next mid-size city. There is one such city to the west of me and one to the east of me, both about equally far away. As it happens, both of these towns have better grocery stores than the gigantic Walmart located three miles from my house. The city to the east has a fantastic Mexican restaurant, and that’s an endorsement coming from someone who grew up in Arizona.
Last month, when I went to pick up dinner there, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up freshly made croissants from the bakery, among other things. I have a lot of trouble remembering where I’ve parked, especially in giant lots, but I have a strong sense of direction so I always know where to start looking. After strolling around a bit, I found the familiar sheen of my silver Toyota Corolla, opened the trunk with my keys, and started loading things inside. A couple of seconds later, I stopped dead in my tracks: the front-left wheel was missing its wheel cover. I froze, “Oh G*d, I’m loading my stuff into someone else's car! .... But, wait? I opened the trunk with my keys ... This is my car! And it’s missing a hubcap!”
Discovering a missing hubcap sent me into an emotional miasma: I was already in panic from the mistaken assumption I had broken into someone else’s vehicle; I was shocked that I had not noticed the missing hubcap before; I was confused because I did not know how recently it has fallen off, nor why; I was scared and upset because I did not know if my wheel would roll off down the highway when I started driving; I was embarrassed because, to me, the Corolla looked like the version a trailer hick owned – in disrepair and aesthetically vagrant - not a well-educated tech burnout. In short, I was overwhelmed.
I was overwhelmed, but I was also curious. I wanted answers. I wanted to know whether it was imperative to replace the hubcap, and how soon I would have to do it. I wanted to know how much it would cost, and how much skill would be required to reinstall it. I am not an automobile aficionado. Although my ex-boyfriend was a car protégé – he remodeled a convertible from scratch – and much of his training rubbed off on me (something I am grateful for), I am still a relative novice when it comes to anything mechanic-related. To that point, I only discovered that this missing part was called a hubcap after I called my local auto shop and asked them about the “silver wheel cover thing that goes on top of the tire.” The lady on the phone was kind enough to point me toward a business that specializes in affordable after-market tire accessories.
The Exploration That Comes From Curiosity
From there, a whole world of exploration opened up. To start, I discovered the hard way that even if you order the correct make and model for a hubcap, if it is the wrong year, it is impossible to install. Secondly, I discovered that if you order the exact hubcap without the car manufacturer’s logo, it is $60 cheaper. A bunch of other questions began popping into my mind: does the manufacturer jack up the price of their trademarked wheel covers? Does the middleman mark it up even more? Also, who is stupid enough to spend 3x the money on a piece of plastic – probably made in an Asian factory – with a logo, when you can't even see it when the wheel is spinning at 60mph? Maybe the target market for Toyota-imprinted hubcaps is OCD soccer moms who must have a matching set, or else they will melt down...
Unfortunately, for practical reasons, I had to leave those questions in the air, though I hope to return to them. One broken hubcap and $30 down the drain later, I ordered the correct one. To my chagrin, even though the 2011 hubcap model fit, it was loose. Only then did I realize that the front-left wheel was a slightly different make than the other wheels, a detail impossible to ascertain without looking carefully. I am convinced this barely noticeable difference in tire shape was a big reason why the original hubcap fell off.
I then had to research different methods for tightening up a loose hubcap. I finally settled on purchasing a small bottle of tire-compatible super glue and dabbing a couple of brushes onto the back of the plastic circle. I had to settle for a tradeoff: this hubcap will be next-to-impossible to remove when I go to replace the tire again, but that will not be for a while and it will not fall off again in the meantime. Perhaps I should ask the shop for a matching tire next time.
The Guilt That Interferes With Exploration
The whole time I engaged in this learning process, I wrestled against a heavy blanket of guilt that I wanted to cast off of my being. The source of this guilt is what Jung calls the senex archetype, or an endlessly critical father: one who accuses me of wasting time trying to look into the mechanical minutiae of cars; for wasting money on the wrong hubcap and breaking it; for wasting effort trying to install it myself and tighten it with glue.1
There are six or seven other major areas of my life in which embracing curiosity and exploration is tainted by guilt, overwhelm, and lack of resources. In my experience with several coaching clients, I have discovered that this is also the case for them; turns out that most humans are essentially fixated on about a half-dozen types of internalized tug-of-war games that don't appear to yield easily in the direction of joy and ease. I’m convinced that if the latter were to win consistently, then life would become significantly more meaningful; I intend to figure out a way to make that happen consistently for myself and others.
Divine Encounters Begin With The Ordinary
Transcendence can be attained in different ways, but no system of spirituality I’ve ever encountered has suggested it be done via hubcap replacement. Many enlightened masters do claim that what is most profound can be accessed from what is most ordinary – that is to say, extraordinary. Aside from the ordinary quality, what is it about this experience that shot it from the realm of earthly mechanics toward a divine encounter? By its nature, transcendence is impossible to capture fully, but if I could offer a summary, I would say:
In this story, I lived out a significant challenge with a concrete goal subject to an unknown landscape and multiple stages of discovery over an extended period requiring deep reliance on self to provide the appropriate resources and knowledge.
In other words, I engaged in serious play. Serious play is not the same as regular old play. Regular play is innocuous and often slides toward self-indulgence and cheap entertainment. Serious play has a foundation in that sort of childlike innocence, but it is not afraid to dig down into the dirt of reality and apply effort. There is functionality and decorum to it, but not at the cost of enjoyment.
Dr. Jonathan Haight and Greg Lukianoff wrote an entire book on the scourge of “safetyism” that is fragilizing many 21st-century children, and even adults. They articulate some principles to counteract a culture that deprives people of the necessary “hubcap replacement” experiences needed to face the world with skill and grace. I would summarize their verdict as a drastic call to ramp up the amount of serious play that adults bring into their lives. In other words, doing things with high stakes that require real effort with joy and ease – a proper playfulness.
The great saints and incarnations who’ve come before us have all shown us how to walk the path of the playful in the most high-stakes circumstances. They may not have had to replace hubcaps, but I guarantee the spokes fell off the chariot wheels they rode into town. It’s time to return to this mode of being, lest we as humanity succumb to cheap substitutes for meaning, or completely disengage from proper meaning-making at all.
Religion Is The Basis For Proper Play
The purpose of religion is not (at fundament) to achieve social stability within a tribe, nor to launder consent for state authority, nor to enforce orthodoxy. These are common goods that can result from the proper practice of religion, but they’re not its basis.
If you accept this proposal, then what is the purpose of religion? How does proper religion function?
Take a look at one of the building blocks of religion: symbols. Religion binds experiences to symbols, but this binding is not absolute: it is an invitation to make and make new interpretative structures and to break them, to develop the skill to engage in mystery.
A quick look at the history of art will show us how compelling, mysterious, and complex religious symbols actually are. We can’t escape them, because they are what our culture is made of.
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A Catholic or Jew may not be able to leave his own metaphysical symbolic system—and even if he loses his faith, he will continue to see the world through inherited symbols and stories.
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On the other hand, […] symbols are dynamic and don’t have an essence—[…] they may be appropriate to some but are not indispensable. That is why a person can operate within both a Hindu or a Christian symbolic ecology, or any number of overlapping symbolic ecologies. The symbolic frame can never capture the whole picture; the Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao.– from “Awakening From the Meaning Crisis”, Chapter 35
Symbols are not the only building blocks of religion. Rituals and archetypes are also building blocks.
Archetypes offer ways for individuals to engage with their identity that is grounded in the real but ascends toward the mystical – to make their identity “thick”. Rituals encourage individuals in relationships with each other to bind to certain archetypes and symbols and break apart their identification with others; to question and redefine who they are productively and collectively.
In the Christian mythopoesis, the archetype of the Father instructs one how to adopt fatherhood such that one can become a father to others. In the Hindu mythopoesis, the archetype of the dancing yogi, नटराज (Nataraj) instructs one how to adopt an unbridled passion – an existential musicality – toward life such that one inculcates vigor in others.
Thus, I offer that the purpose of religion, properly understood, is to instigate serious play and; moreover, to bind together a community of serious players. The play must have an embodied impact on the family, friends, buildings, machines, plants, and even insects in your surroundings.
This, above all other reasons, is why marriage is a religious institution. Marriage is a container for serious play.
But!
The rituals of marriage do not just remain a container of play for the married couple alone. The practices involved in marriage reveal how to create this container for the new life produced by the marriage.
Children, given well-ordered breathing space and rich community contact, are already realized masters of serious play. They may lack the maturity to transmit it, but they know how to participate in it, in a way that adults often forget.
Unfortunately, when this ‘breathing space’ and ‘rich community’ don’t exist, or they are twisted into an unhealthy context, religion descends into madness.
Identity Is A Cheap Substitute For Play
Why would someone call themselves queer? I doubt anyone particularly enjoys being labeled as strange, different, or unusual; it interferes directly with their ability to belong and thrive.
“Queer” is a bid for play concerning sexual identity, albeit a cheap one. It is an end-run around rituals and archetypes that don’t properly instruct. That’s what designates it as a hollow socio-religion. Some labels that are generated regarding sexual archetypes do not serve their purpose uniformly (e.g., “husband & wife”). When it comes to sex, most communities I’ve belonged to were either permissive tending toward degeneracy, or parochial tending toward induration.
Despite how many leftists are terrible (don’t think I’m letting them off the hook here!), there are plenty of people2 who are trying to engage in productive play around the non-traditional roles they cultivate in their lives; the archetypes they aspire to; the rituals that reify those archetypes.
I'm not stupid, I understand that certain games are more dangerous than others and that in most games, it's best to optimize for survival above everything else. There is a difference between playing around with the placement $30 hubcap and playing around with the design $3M jet engine; there is a cost to “playing” with one’s identity by becoming an anime furry.
Yet, until enough people are shown responsible, non-damaging ways to engage and, importantly, arrive at maturity in their non-traditional identity, the toaster-f*cking will continue.
What Does Arriving At Maturity Look Like?
I don’t know. I will let you know when I get there. I do know that it involves eating a lot of sh*t. Not just any old sh*t. The sh*t that comes from God’s well of wisdom.
How can I tell that I’m drinking from this well?
I feel overwhelmed and curious.
I know I am living out a significant challenge with a concrete goal subject to an unknown landscape and multiple stages of discovery over an extended period requiring deep reliance on self to provide the appropriate resources and knowledge.
I sense the tug-of-war turning away from guilt and shame, yielding in the direction of joy and ease.
I bind and break my identity in a way that brings me closer to the image that I was created for – and closer to the One who created that image for me to inhabit.
I find more hubcaps to replace.
(I hope your hubcap falls off, too, because I love you)
To be clear, my actual father was much less critical than this internalized version when I shared my experience. In this specific instance, he was quite proud of me for taking the initiative to solve such a complicated problem with relative ease. Part of the internalized version, though, does come from him: he is not very skilled physically, and growing up, he significantly over-valued investment into purely intellectual pursuits at the expense of hands-on skills. While he did not mean to, in the interest of protecting energy and time, he discouraged me from trying what he was already bad at.
The “plenty of people” is me. I’m pretty sure it is truly plenty of people, though.
The Hubcap is my new favorite Religious Symbol
This may not have been your intent but what I took from your article is that it's important to use and expand our agency into actual doing and knowing and living and dying. Rather than being a consumer of life.