Your Bumper Sticker Changed My Life

You don’t know me. Our paths may never cross again and, yet, your courage and forethought to display your beliefs on the back of your car have changed me in a very profound and real way. You see, your bumper sticker changed my life.

It turns out, I’d been going about it all wrong — life that is. Despite being a successful real estate attorney with a home in the suburbs and a beautiful family, I felt something was lacking in my life. At first, I thought that a new Ferrari — or two — would solve the problem but they didn’t. Neither did a third home in Belgium or six months of volunteering to build clean water wells in Central Africa.

In hindsight, I know that I was living life too purposefully, that I was too concerned about goals and outcomes. Sometimes you have to be open to the universe to understand what it has in store for you.

It’s been a few weeks but I still vividly remember the moment that changed my life. I was obsessing over the details of a deal on my way to the office in Sausalito when a semi-truck blew past me on the highway and forced me onto the shoulder. Before I even had a second to curse or raise my middle finger I saw it, the deceptively simple message that changed everything — Keep on Truckin’.

Without a second thought, I quit my job, pulled a few strings to get my Commercial Drivers License, and became a long-haul truck driver! It was the perfect transition to a lifelong dream. I was now a Zen Buddhist seeking enlightenment in the most unlikely places — bumper stickers plastered on the backs of cars and trucks throughout the country.

I’ve had a few missteps along my way to enlightenment. Salt Life is apparently a statement about someone’s love of the ocean and not a plea to ingest more sodium as I learned in the ER with life-threatening high blood pressure. Donating to the ACLU after being implored to Make America Great Again was, apparently, not the intent of the MAGA crowd.

Other insights have come at a greater cost…

To read more just click through to Your Bumper Sticker Changed My Life on Medium!

About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.