Currency

Someone told me once:

 "In order to stay awake while driving, when you are tired beyond control, your cure is holding the largest bill outside your blowing window."

 Theory is that you will be so kicked into gear and snapped out of your sleeping state, that the scare of losing any chunk of change will open your eyes. 

I thought:

 "wow, belonging to that statistic would make me a disgrace to my own kind. No. No I cannot be chunked into that sleepy, desperate, money-hungry fact."

Driving to where the trees became taller and the houses made themselves lesser known, my eyes and consciousness began making a vanishing act on me on route 80. Honestly, I can't even blame them- 2 hours at constant speed, it was nearly impossible to glory at marvels after such a long day.

So, I did what any sane, half-awake speeding driver would do.

I reached for my wallet. 

Snagging a 5 dollar bill was really, all I could scrounge up, being a post-college-grad now. Despite the amount, the sound alone of my currency flapping in the open breeze, ready to take its flight out the window without my permission, was enough to awaken my state of mind, and realize I was drifting towards the left a little.

As Abe Lincoln stared me in the eyes in complete disbelief that I just came that close to saying my farewells moments prior, I had my thought:

five dollars woke me up.

mountains, valleys, and diversity in every car that passed, had no toll on my excitement for open eyelids. No change in the volume knob, and no wonderful stretch of land was going to wake me up from the long day I had been through.

what awakens your soul?

Is it money? a job? Love? The prospect of it all? Happiness? Success? Is our currency something that runs our consciousness...because, if we lose it, we'd be lost?

I found myself asking what my true currency was. What had bought me out. I had wondered what would wake me up if everything else failed on that stretch of route 80 in its attempt.

I had an answer. Yet, it wasn't something as tangible as a five dollar bill...

currency.