How those annoying dashboard alerts are a little like your conscience

Does anything raise our anxiety more than an alert on our car’s dashboard?

Recently I got a “tire pressure sensor error” warning. Does that mean my tire pressure is low or my car can no longer detect low tire pressure? It didn’t matter. The alert caused me to catastrophize that I was seconds away from a flat tire and a humiliating existence as one of those poor souls on the side of the highway.

The low gas alert is pretty useful. That is, until, you’ve procrastinated to the point that it says “0 miles until empty.” Then your hierarchy of needs including food, water, bathroom, soccer practice, and stopping at red lights is supplanted by finding a gas station. To run out of gas is really one of life’s great crotch kicks for poor planning and prioritization.

Nothing is worse than the “check engine” light. I mean who the heck has time to check the freakin’ engine? Even if the alert said, “Your engine is suddenly in catastrophic shape,” I would have no recourse. The check engine light signals you have to take your car into the dealership. Now you have a time-and-money sucking adventure in your immediate future. It’s just the worst. Which is why some people ignore it. Like my dad.

In alerts we do not trust

I should be fair. My dad takes great care of his cars and actually gifted me an ‘09 Ford Taurus that just surpassed 200,000 miles and is still purring like an old, black, slightly rusty kitten.

But my dad has had his share of old cars, espousing the frugal philosophy of keeping a car until a scientist gives it a dinosaur name. Mine is the Oldfartaurus.

When you have an old car, the alerts tend to come on more frequently. Sometimes it's because something's wrong with the car. And sometimes it's because something's wrong with the alert.

A faulty alert is just as annoying as a real one. It sits there, staring at you, even goading you to do something. But you've checked the gizmos and the gaskets. You've amazingly diagnosed the clunker yourself and are convinced there's nothing wrong with the car except the alert.

So what’s a man to do with such an alert? Drive around and let the thing taunt him all day? Take the car into the dealership and have them disable it? Buy a new car?

Heck no. Not when you have an amazing mix of practicality and frugality like my dad. He simply takes a piece of electrical tape and places it over the alert. Problem solved. As long as you don’t mind your dashboard looking like a kid’s craft project, you’re right as rain.

The good kinds of alerts

Jokes aside, dashboard alerts have merit. And if we cover an accurate one up with tape, we’ll soon find ourselves broken down on the side of the road.

As humans, we also have dashboard alerts that signal how our engine is doing. It’s called our conscience. Alerts and cautions, popping up all day long, pestering us about problems that don’t exist—or do they?

We tend to tape up our conscience alerts at our peril. We convince ourselves that a part of our conscience should be silenced to get what we desire. Over time, the cautions pile up with no corrective action. Over and over the alert says, “Don’t look,” but we look. The alert says, “Don’t say it,” but we speak. The alert says, “I wouldn’t do that,” but we do it. And our car, so to speak, becomes dangerous to ourselves and others.

The obvious solution is to stop taping up the dash. The conscience is God’s gift to us. If we heed the signal, we can fix a part of us that’s broken. It may alert us 100 days in a row, but if we heed it every time, we’ll find the signal stops popping up. Whatever it was stops being such a problem. We’ve changed or grown, and our engine is healthier.

Oh, there it is right now. Your conscience is calling. How will you respond?