All I want is a big yellow tractor.
All I want is a big yellow tractor.
For as long as I can remember, it’s always been an unfortunate quality of mine to really, deeply want something. With two older siblings who always set the standard impossibly high, I never didn’t feel like there wasn’t something I couldn’t do, or I couldn’t have– no that's not right– nothing I couldn't want. My mom always sticks to a particular phrase in order to dissuade this attitude: “you want something until you have it, and then you have it, and you want something else. But if you actually just stopped with what you do have, you could be satisfied with the world as it is.” That got me thinking, and wondering, and dreaming. Day after day of shopping, and searching, looking, and yearning for this perfect magical object that would cure my hunger for the “next”.
It’s human nature to always want the next thing. When I think of this particular concept of want, I don’t actually think of objects first; instead I think of our present. Because how many times are we sitting in the “now” wondering about the future or the past? It’s a contradictory oxymoron, as in, we quite literally can’t live in all three moments at the same time, and yet humans do a pretty good job of attempting to. So not only to ground myself in the now, but quench my extremely privileged place of want– not need–I have decided that all I want is a big yellow tractor.
What could you do with a big yellow tractor?
You could dig with it. You could drive it. You could sit in it and read an extremely good book. You could clumsily scramble up the side, using big round black tire wheels to perch on the hood and pull yourself up, facing the world atop your big, beautiful yellow tractor. You could shimmy below laying face up to the twisted ugly pipes and screws, and bolts, wondering if you will ever understand how your tractor works. You could even print out a photo of how each part of the big yellow tractor works, but I’d be willing to bet you you'd still have no idea what any of that meant. You could sit from afar, taking photos and pictures of how your big yellow tractor could look to the rest of the world– I wonder if they would know the relationship between you and that big yellow tractor, the love that you share for that piece of heavy machinery. Because a big yellow tractor isn’t impractical, it’s perfectly impractical.
For me, I would choose to simply sit within my big yellow tractor, all four walls of glass letting the bright beams of sun envelop me. I’d sit crisscrossed in the driver's seat just after noon, so the sun would utterly fill the space around me. I’d curl up with a book, and I’d stay there, wholeheartedly satisfied with the content my big yellow tractor brings me.
At this point you might wonder why I would love to have this big yellow tractor, and my answer is simple: that feeling of wonder, and joy. That would be why I would love my big yellow tractor. Joy, that can only be described by watching a big yellow tractor trundling down the street, traveling from one construction site to another. Except instead of sitting within my tractor finding the next. I’d sit in my big yellow tractor traveling at a snail's pace, because being in the big yellow tractor would be enough for me. I wouldn’t look out the windows of my monstrous yellow hunk of metal. I wouldn’t wonder what the people outside of my windows were thinking as I traveled past. I wouldn’t even wonder what street I’d turn onto next. Because all of those things would not be living in the present. So instead, I’ll sit inside my big beautiful yellow tractor perfectly content with the world, because my big yellow tractor is– and will always be– my whole world.
