off course

I drive the wrong direction to work and I'm not alone.
Each morning, people who live east, clamber into their cars and head west, and at the very same time, doors in the west are flung open as commuters leap into their cars and head east.
I am a part of this strange migration.
This cross current commute is not why I admit that I drive the wrong direction to work though.
I've read that birds use the sun and stars to orient themselves as they migrate. I realized yesterday morning for the first time that although I'm in a flock, flapping madly up the freeway, my heart is longing to orient itself by the sun and stars.
Instead, in the early morning as the eastern sky melts into the yellows and golds of the rising sun, I turn my back resolutely and head west towards a leaden sky.
In the late afternoon, as the setting sun casts a flush of coral and mauve upon the western sky , I point my car towards the fading light of the east and hurtle homeward.
No wonder I feel at times like a bird off course.