The Joy of Uber Driving

by Yamini Redewill

  Also, I have to admit with some hesitation that the thing that has stopped me from actively searching for an intimate relationship at my age is noticing how my physical body seems to be rapidly deteriorating. I have unattractive age spots creeping up my arms and legs and face; thinning hair; many more wrinkles on my face (where is that guy who offered to pay for a facelift?); a bloated belly; and skin keratosis on my back, which the dermatologist calls old-age barnacles. I couldn’t help thinking it would be a challenge for anyone to want to make love to this grossly flawed physical representation of me. As an artist, it’s always been difficult to separate myself from the beauty standards that I apply to everyone else.

  Anyway, I’ve come to the place where I don’t think my self-love depends on my opinion of my physical image. I can now look into the mirror and say, “It is what it is. So what? And hey, I’m not so bad for an old broad!” However, it is a blessing that I’m not aware of how I look most of the time, since I don’t go around holding a mirror in front of me everywhere. My true mirrors are in the eyes of the people I meet each day. They tell me I am beautiful and loved. Over time I have learned to be true to myself, to stand up for my truth and kindly reject any opposition to it. I also know I am not my body, given my three out-of-body experiences. Ultimately, I believe self-love comes from knowing that I am a child of God and therefore loved by Him/ Her unconditionally and forever, even when I’m wrong or untrue to myself.

  PING! It was Mother’s Day, and I decided to work the early day shift instead of the early evening shift. I picked a rose and put it in a small water bottle to mark the occasion. After driving two separate mothers with their loving husbands and children in tow, I was summoned by four gay Salvadoran guys in San Francisco who wanted to celebrate the bright sunny day at the Presidio. Their plan was to take selfies and pictures of the coastline and the Golden Gate Bridge and send them to their mothers in San Salvador. When they entered the car, their cologne engulfed the car’s interior, overtaking the scent of the rose. But mostly, their friendly jubilance permeated the car with high energy and laughter.

  Two of them spoke enough English to enable me to interact with them. I asked if they were going to celebrate with their mothers, and they sadly said no, that they wished they could, but that their madres were in San Salvador. I asked how they liked living in San Francisco, and they brightened up noticeably and in unison exclaimed, “Oh sí, we love it here. We are free to be ourselves and to live unashamed of who we are. No one here judges us or condemns us for being gay.” There was lively chitchat in both English and Spanish after that, and when I delivered them to their destination, one of them gave me a five-dollar tip, and they all smiled broadly as they waved goodbye. It was a perfect ending for my Uber adventures that day.

  Here is the perfect message from God to me: “There is no need, my dearest friend, to love yourself, not from the level of the divided mind, the ego. For all of this is a fantasy. There is nothing else that is needed, only the celebration of your Love, and the moments for remembering the truth.” —The Messages from God through Yael and Doug Powell

  AMEN!

  So now that that’s settled and self-love is a done deal, what do I do about my elusive soul mate? Surely now is the opportune time for him to show up, right? As much as I thought my desire for a relationship was diminished by my consumptive creativity, I realized I might be fooling myself a little. My creative outlets were the excuse I always used to justify my aloneness to myself and to curtail any moments of depression that crept in when thinking about it.

  So, I took a deep breath and decided to be proactive by enrolling in a seven-week course by Katherine Woodward Thomas called Calling in the One, which I understood had a high success rate for attracting and having a long-term intimate relationship with your soul mate. I had to push past my built-in skepticism from years of failing so many workshops on this subject.

  The first week of the course was an introduction and an overview of what to expect along with seven days of exercises and meditations to increase our awareness of ourselves and the people around us. Each week had a specific course of action toward our personal growth with seven days of exercises and meditations. By the end of the second week, I began to notice a shift in my consciousness. I no longer clung to my “ironclad” sad story. . . . It seemed over-rehearsed. Although it elicited the same expressions of sympathy from everyone in the group, it strangely rang hollow to me. It frankly surprised me that, after more than forty-five years of meditation and grueling, hard transformational work, anything new could have such an effect on me. When I began, I was positive I had done it all and this was just going to be a reminder. But by the third and fourth week, I realized this was different. I found myself deeply engaged and awestruck by so many new revelations. By the fifth week I suddenly got the brilliant idea to focus with all my might on a prayer of intention, like I did when I was nine or when I healed Hercules and, to a lesser extent, like I do every day as an Uber driver.

  My prayer felt really powerful as I spread my request far and wide over the treetops and mountains and oceans to the starry reaches of the universe.

  A side note: During this course I noticed a strange phenomenon while driving. It seemed every day I was either surrounded by sleek Tesla cars or sapphire-blue cars of any make or model. I had never seen a sapphire-blue Tesla, so I made it up that when I actually saw a sapphire-blue Tesla, my true love would appear in my life.

  Before I got to Chapter 6 of the course and just after I said my prayer, a sapphire-blue Tesla appeared coming out of the Whole Foods Market as I was going in. The driver’s eyes met mine and smiled, and I suddenly realized what I was looking at.

  HALLELUJAH

  Says It All

  My love of self has finally taken hold, and life is a song of continuous celebration, more like a Bollywood movie than an American B-movie with a predictable ending. Life is still a mystery but not a dilemma or a drama anymore. There may be a few pieces of the puzzle still unaccounted for, a few more layers of the onion to be peeled off and more waves in the ocean to ride, but it has gotten easier, lighter, and more fun, with fewer and fewer attachments to outcomes. I notice whenever I happen to see a glimpse of myself in my rearview mirror that I have a perpetual smile. I also notice that I am very often blissful for absolutely no reason at all.

  I feel so blessed to have had so many experiences that brought me closer and closer to who I am today. Looking back, I was a classic victim for the first half of my life and very gradually, after a gazillion mistakes, failures, and victories and never giving up, I miraculously awoke one day with a stronger sense of self-worth. Yes, I am that LSD lady in the flowing rainbow dress, but instead of descending the giant staircase, I’m now ascending: my higher self merged with my earthly self.

  Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism (Soka Gakkai International) was my first adventure into spirituality. It taught me many things, one of which is being acutely aware of all the miracles that happen daily in my life with or without chanting. I notice that I’ve naturally come to expect miracles for almost everything every day. It taught me compassion for my members and courage to go outside my comfort zone and approach complete strangers in a personal and caring way. This has served me well as an Uber driver. My passengers sometimes read out loud the compliments other passengers have written about me on the app. One such quote gave me goosebumps: “Yamini was the coolest and most badass Uber driver ever!” I don’t know who wrote this, but I have to say it made me feel like a millennial, not a senior citizen. Most all of my compliments are about my ability to connect in a meaningful and entertaining way. My navigation skills are not so good, perhaps because I talk too much, sometimes missing my turns. But no one has complained about that . . . yet.

  Chanting two to three hours a day for thirteen years straight taught me discipline and perseverance. Discipline was in full bloom back then, but noticing my tendency toward procrastination these days, it could still use some tweaking. However, I can be proud of my perseverance
through all the careers I’ve taken on. I seemed to have had no fear going up to movie stars at an event and asking to photograph them for my book The Natural Goddess or contacting well-known celebrities to speak at my Festival of Goddesses for free for three years. I believe this courage came from going out on the streets every night and inviting strangers to come to our Buddhist meetings.

  One of my most important lessons was learning to surrender my ego and my many preconditioned opinions in order to trust and follow the guidance of a wiser, more experienced person than myself. I also learned the joy of teamwork in helping to create district meetings or huge theatrical events. During this time I put these lessons to good use, first as a social worker in LA and later as a wardrobe coordinator/designer, being an important part of many TV and movie production teams. It also served me later as a producer and creator of my own festivals.

  But in spite of that, I still clung to my victimhood mentality in regard to relationships, which got amplified and then completely dismantled during my time with Osho.

  Meditation practices through Osho brought me closer to my divine authentic self, which is pure bliss for no reason. With Bhagwan, I learned to be in the here and now (i.e., the holy present).

  Some time ago, I visited a dear friend who was deeply depressed and suicidal and was put in a psyche ward to protect and prevent him from doing any harm to himself. While there, I read a passage to him from Osho’s book Ancient Music in the Pines, which spoke of hope and hopelessness as living only in the future, not the present. Being a sannyasin himself, he listened attentively and understood.

  “So, you have lived with hope—now the hope has failed and you are living in hopelessness. Let the hopelessness also fail and drop hope and hopelessness together. Live here now! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living, but a way of suicide. There is no need to feel hopeless. Live here now! Life is tremendously blissful. It is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes, but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon.”

  So Osho was there in that here and now, guiding my friend back to himself.

  That book was pure magic. And so is this book. I thought I was nearly done writing when, shortly after my visit, I attended a party in celebration of my suicidal friend, who recovered completely. When he returned home, he and his wife gave a celebration party thanking all his friends for being there for him in his darkest hour. We all partook in our own transformation ceremony, releasing old wounds and habits and declaring our intentions going forward.

  When I arrived at the house earlier, I saw someone running toward me with open arms, and dear God, it was VJ! We hugged and cried and said we loved each other, and I felt all the cells of my body wake up and align in jubilation to this unexpected reunion. She mentioned that because her daughter was being treated radically for breast cancer, she realized life was too short to carry any resentment and separate herself from her friends. Hallelujah! I had the very same thought months ago!

  PING! Well, I’ll be . . . a rider request came from someone named Lorelei in Pac Heights. Yes, it was the copper-haired beauty who transformed herself in the back seat of my car and then stepped blithely into a black hole on Broadway over a year ago. I hardly recognized her with her stylish hairdo cut an inch or two above her shoulders, parted on the side with a slant of hair falling over one eye. But she recognized me immediately and clapped her hands in glee. She informed me that what I told her the day of her audition was auspicious, because sure enough, she was challenged with the very things I warned her about. This made me so happy, and I asked her how her life had been since then. She thrust her left hand over the front seat and flashed a big diamond ring. This was not what I was expecting, but I saw the glow on her face and realized this meant everything to her. I congratulated her, and being mindful not to spoil the moment, I discreetly asked her about her singing career. Nodding her head with a resigned sigh, she related how she’d come to some harsh realizations about life in showbiz and decided that she wanted no part of it. Instead she landed a job in marketing and communications for one of San Francisco’s famous art museums through some connections she’d made socially in San Francisco. This was where she’d met her fiancé. Softly she started singing a lullaby and patting her stomach, hoping to get my attention with a wistful smile. Catching her look through the rearview mirror, I thought, Uh-huh . . . now that is excellent use of her talent! I smiled back.

  Recently I took a trip to Laguna and to my cousin Karla’s wedding in Avalon, Catalina. Karla is in her sixties and has been single for the last thirty years after a failed marriage and two beautiful grown daughters. I’ve always thought of her as an earth angel with her long flowing blond hair and large doe-like eyes and mostly her very sweet demeanor. She found someone who recognized how special she is. This was a victory lap for her, and for me, a catalyst for another epiphany. I was witness to the purest and most profound expression of love between two people for a whole day and night. I felt saturated with their love.

  However, the next morning I awoke with the inevitable “Why not me God?” So I prayed. I asked God to help me understand, to accept and to appreciate my station in life. What came up for me immediately, to my surprise, was my father. Unexpectedly, I saw a whole new rendition of my dad: the incorrigible egoist and womanizer suddenly had a big heart. I saw all the things he did to make me happy and to gain my love and respect. I saw that he knew I had lost respect for him after all the things I caught him doing with other women. He was besieged with a desperate need for my love and acceptance, especially when I entered my teens. This experience went beyond forgiveness as I realized there was nothing to forgive except my own entrenched and misguided beliefs. I cried tears of love for him as I let go of all those old worn-out stories that had kept me locked up in my own little prison.

  Maybe more importantly, I have come to the understanding that being single is not the anathema it is made out to be in our culture. The accomplished single women who come to mind are Marianne Williamson, Oprah, Shirley MacLaine, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton, Katherine Hepburn, and Chelsea Handler who once said:

  “It’s not just O.K. to be single for both men and women — it’s wonderful to be single, and society needs to embrace singlehood in all its splendiferous, solitary glory. Next time you see a single woman, instead of asking her where her boyfriend, husband or eunuch is, congratulate her on her accomplished sense of self and for reaching the solitary mountaintop by herself without a ring on her finger weighing her down like a male paperweight. Without single women and their impressive sense of self, we’d be without Queen Elizabeth I, Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen, Harper Lee, Diane Keaton, Greta Garbo, Jane Goodall and me, myself and I. Being single is delightfully more than it’s cracked up to be . . . if you can stand the horror of your own company, that is.”

  —Chelsea Handler featured in Vulture, 2013

  Another leg of this trip took me to Temecula to visit my brother, a Trump follower, whom I hadn’t seen for five years. I was mildly concerned and not quite sure what to expect. When I arrived, rather than the open-armed greeting that I had received many times in the past, he was noticeably wary. Our last political encounter was during the Obama administration, when he railed against him and spouted all kinds of conspiracy theories. I reacted as the passionate, progressive Obama lover I am and was shouted down. When I’m angry or confronted angrily, I lose my ability to argue coherently. So we had stayed away from each other except for sending cards and gifts at birthdays and Christmas. He never told me he voted for Trump, I just knew it, and it became obvious that trip. However, something in me was determined to heal this relationship and to gain his trust. The only way I felt I could do that was to not judge him but to just love and appreciate him and avoid any political discussion. It worked. He did try a couple of times, and I would either just smile and nod or change the subject to a more personal one that he could respond
to positively. He once mentioned something about “fake news” from the New York Times and so on, and I just opined that all journalists are human and tend to be slanted one way or another. Fox News and Trump were never mentioned.

  And then I took a trip to Tacoma, Washington, to attend another wedding: my godson’s. There, miles away from home, a very strange thing happened. With 150 of their young friends dressed in Roaring Twenties costumes (me and his mom included), as per the couple’s request, we took part in the celebration. The wedding was lively and joyous, and my little godson was now a grown man, and a husband to boot. At the reception, his bride decided to throw her bouquet. I saw about twenty of her girlfriends rush to the front of the room as I sat there, sipping Champaign bemusedly, when suddenly, several of the girls turned to face me and pointed a finger, signaling me to join them. I shook my head and made a big X with my fingers, but they wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, so I surrendered and was sauntering up there when someone grabbed my arm and pulled me to the front and center of the lineup. And then it happened: the bouquet was lobbed, falling in slow motion from a high arch, and landed squarely and uncontestably in my hands, which were waist level, not over my head in the usual anticipatory stance. Whaaaa?! This had never happened. Why now?

  Getting back to my time with Bhagwan and the many insights he thrust into my consciousness: I learned how to tap into my authentic self through heart connections, creativity, and meditation. I think I was able to demonstrate “lesson learned” with my brother. Another lesson Bhagwan pounded into our heads was letting go of attachment to anything and everything (especially to him). With my brother, I was able to let go of my need to be right and my attachment to my political beliefs. The payoff is love and connection. The payoff to being right is the illusion of superiority and ultimately separation and regret. I feel the trust I was able to engender between us has laid the groundwork for future conversations. Perhaps we will be able to argue for our POV with each other in a respectful, harmonious, and loving way, no matter what the topic.