Driving in a Storm

I'm hoping to get home before the huge thunderstorm that all the weather services are predicting arrives. But, as I'm driving down the winding, two-lane, 55-mph-zone (a "twisty," I would call it, if I were riding my Kawasaki ZX-6. Man, that bike was fun...), it hits. First, a few random splatters on the windshield; huge, messy raindrops like bird splats. Then, with no further prelude, downpour. Not white-out or black-out; water-out. I grope for the wiper controls, reflecting on my one complaint about my otherwise perfect car: the fastest speed on the wipers is too slow. This car is made for sunny days.
The drive home stretches and flexes into a long, surreal quest. The first threatening rumbles of thunder are too late to warn of the rain. On the Interstate, at 40 mph, hazard flashers clicking, I have no attention for the swirling, dancing trees, as they must be in this wind, on the median and the verge. My focus has narrowed; there is a pair of taillights ahead of me, with attendant yellow flashers, rippling and swaying through the water on my windshield. A quick check of the left lane--is anything coming?--then I am back to the lights of the vehicle in front of me. Have they brightened? Are those brakelights, or just taillights? Have they gotten any bigger, slowing without braking? Am I too close? Is there an accident ahead? The radio is on, but I couldn't tell you what's playing; it's as if my entire cerebral cortex has been re-allocated to interpreting visual information. I turn the radio off; the wipers are keeping a steady whump-whump, the hazard flashers are clicking, the rain is pounding on the windshield and the roof. No sense in overwhelming my poor ears, since I'm not listening to them anyway. I think.
Lightning, which until now has been a theatrical flickering among distant clouds, becomes immediate and personal in a blinding instant. I do not think I will be struck; there are trees, and cell towers, and light posts, and overpasses, and the metal car around me would likely conduct any errant electrons safely to the ground. Despite all these comforting rationalizations, the small muscles in my pharynx reflexively clench for a moment, and my shoulders tense. Stop that and relax, silly, I tell myself. It wouldn't help if you DID get struck by lightning, anyway.
There is no To Do List at work. There is no dog at home, waiting to be freed from daily confinement. There is no dinner at 7, or favorite TV show at 8. None of these things exist in my mind. I am Driver, in The Thunderstorm. That is all. It occurs to me quite unexpectedly that I spend a lot of time every day considering and dissecting the past, and planning, hoping, and fearing for the future, with very little time spent in the moment, this moment, the one that defines my life right now. That past no longer exists except in my head, in my brain, and a strong enough whack in the noggin could erase its entire existence forever. The future is fog; it doesn't yet exist, isn't happening, and all the things that I plan, hope for, and fear could not possibly all come to pass. Most of those things I spend so much time on will never be. And the ones that will be, will actually happen, will be shrouded in a fog of ignorance, for I will be ignoring them as I spend my attention on the past and the next future. A whole life used up, on things that are not? What a waste. How useless. The only one of these moments that actually is, really, is the one I am in right now. Would I be happier if I were here now, too? How could that be possible, when calendars demand that I schedule appointments, plan vacations, make reservations for hotels, get the laundry done by Saturday at 5 so I can do the other things I have planned for the weekend? When does Now happen? When can it?
Now, all of these philosophical thoughts are in the background, vague and random, as I follow the taillights in the rain. Now demands that I pay attention, unless I wish to forfeit all tomorrows and become road pizza. Death is not the fear; pain is. We have been here forever, those taillights and I; there has never been anything else. The drive home is not this long; we are in some alternative place, some other way of being. Like a dentist's chair; it is not exactly pleasant, but we are at least fully present. The storm is riskier--what if some other car were to plow into mine from behind?--but at least there are others with me in this Now. The taillights ahead of me have a driver, and the hazard flashers I can see ahead of them do, too. We are each isolated in our metal boxes on wheels, but our metal boxes protect us from the Storm, and we are all experiencing the same one.
The rain is slowing now. Lightning and thunder still flash and crack, but I can see that the taillights ahead of me belong to a grey Hyundai SUV. Usually I dislike SUVs; they are tall, and my car is short, and I can't see past them, and it makes me nervous. But this SUV has been a beacon; watching its taillights has been an assurance to me that there is not a vehicle stopped ahead, its lights out, in the impenetrable grey of the rain fifty feet ahead. And the car ahead of it, a burgundy-red Toyota sedan; a beacon of safety for the SUV. We depend on each other. Perhaps there is a car or SUV behind mine; I can't see its headlights, but sometimes you can't. Perhaps I am a beacon to someone else.
We are picking up speed as the storm subsides. Maybe we have driven out from under it; maybe it has moved on. It doesn't matter; I feel safer. And my exit is coming up. Godspeed, grey SUV! Safe travels, red Toyota! It is odd to me that I feel kinship for these other vehicles, knowing nothing of their drivers, their pasts or futures. We were driving in a storm together. That is all.