The Lot.

I don't have money to buy a car right now and I don't need it anyway, but there is this man on the Great Lakes Hyundai ad who makes me feel like I do, which is maybe the most impressive thing about him. He is EVERYWHERE!! He is on my YouTube, Netflix even google search. In the ad, he is very composed. His suit and face look so crisp to a point where his person looks effortless. His smile does something it shouldn't and his voice commands a respect that is hard to explain but easy to feel. When the camera shows an aerial view of the lot and him walking the lot showing the cars, he gives of the sense that he just had an audience with Midas and the song playing in the background seals the deal. At Great Lakes Hyundai, the savings are so good. The cars in that lot are arranged in rows, gleaming and then he says they work with all types of credit, rates start at around four hundred dollars a month with as little as 0% APR. When I hear this, something in me literally loosens and I feel like I could and should buy the car. I am very certain if I had the money I would walk into that lot with that song stuck in my head, make a purchase and walk away feeling like I had made a good decision. I mean, who doesn't like 0% APR?

The ad only lasts thirty seconds but when it ends I always want to watch it again. The whole thing from the song, the salesperson, the length and the cars are so fascinating.

Imagine this, every car on that lot came from somewhere. It was assembled in a factory, which is its own whole story; the country it was made in, the people who built it, the hands that fitted the parts together, the parts themselves that were small pieces that made the whole. Then it was shipped, and that journey from the familiar to the foreign, from the place it was made to the market where it would be sold is its own story too. There is something in that whole journey that feels like what happens when you grow up somewhere and then have to go out into the world. You leave what was home. You arrive somewhere you did not choose, someone chooses you and once they buy it, another story begins.

Maybe the car was bought in one corner of America. Maybe Japan. The car was then driven and used and at some point the owner got tired of it or something and sold it to somebody else in a different state or a different country. That is another story. In between the purchase and the resale, the car could have witnessed the owner crying in it, arguing, eating, sleeping, someone dying, someone being born, accidents and the next owner would never know the details, just that it is a car. CARFAX may attempt to give them the details, but they would only get a brief statement, never the texture of it and human beings are just like that.

When you meet someone, a friend, a partner, a job, a new life, you walk out onto your own lot. You show them who you are. In the back of your mind you remember image is everything so you show the parts of you that you have selected. You tell your story: where you came from, what you have done, who you have been but you never mention the bad parts and even if you did you only mention a few, just the right amount because everyone knows no one is perfect and if you only show your good side people will not trust you. So you end up disclosing the unsavory parts that are almost always the ones that look like a strength if framed right.

That's not lying. It's editing. You are removing certain things and keeping others and arranging what remains in the most favorable light just like a job interview when they ask about your weaknesses and you describe a strength that borders into a weakness. That curated version of you is not deceptive but rather you with the difficult parts put on a shelf. And the other person receiving you is also doing the same thing.

We all play these three roles at the same time. We are the salesperson walking our own lot, choosing what to say; we are the car, the thing being sold, with our history, damage and mileage and we are also the buyer, taking in what we are being shown and making a decision about what we are willing to accept. However most of the times we assume we are just playing one role and that's how we find ourselves deep in relationships wondering how we got in them in the first place.

The things that stay on the shelf are usually not the dramatic ones. They are the ordinary ones that seemed too small to mention or too obvious to have to say. How money should move in a house, how strictly the children should be raised, whose values and culture are just the default and the other person has to explain themselves. No one puts these things on the lot because these are not the parts you lead with. When you finally become familiar with each other, what is left is the person when they don't have to try anymore. That is when you both find out if what you have is the car you thought you were buying and you now have to make a choice to stay and accept the person or leave.

Just like a car.

Some people go ahead and change cars. If they liked the model, they just upgrade from a 2024 to a 2026. If they didn't like the model but loved the brand, they switch from a Jeep Compass to a Jeep Cherokee. Others leave the brand completely and move from Mercedes to BMW and they never look back. Then there are those who stick to the same car past every reasonable point. The repairs cost more than the car is worth but they press on. They find money they barely have and keep the car running even at five hundred thousand miles. No one around them understands why but they do it loyally, every day and when the engine finally gives out, they just park the car and buy a whole other engine. We all choose what we want to do.

I think about wedding vows sometimes. For better, for worse. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part. When I first heard those words I thought I knew what they meant because they are English and I could read but when you are inside the marriage for a year or ten, those words turn out not to be a general statement. They become that specific habit that felt endearing in year one and feel entirely different by year seven. They become the real you who appears when you are no longer performing. Both of you feel shortchanged at some point because you are both the car and the buyer, and you both came in with incomplete information and have been working out the rest ever since.

Movies barely show you that part. We only get to see the falling in love parts, the wedding, and then it's happily ever after and the credits roll. However, the vows are already in the wedding scene, but everyone is still crying happy tears, and the photographer is moving around trying to catch the light. We don't hear it because we are still on the lot, listening to the song.

The savings are indeed so good.