I drive a Jeep that I inherited from my father, who in turn inherited it from his father. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather always drove an old Jeep. It’s a 1952 Jeep Tornado 4x4, a limited edition of just two dozen units, its exterior coated in fine, gleaming copper. I’m not entirely sure in which year he acquired it, but I know that Jeep stayed with my grandfather until the end of his life. Both my father and grandfather filled my childhood with stories about it—stories that I believed were fantastical. My grandfather used to say, among other things, that the noble metal from which the Jeep was made had a mystical origin, forged from the melted-down spears and shields of prehistoric Celtic warriors. My father, on the other hand, was convinced that my grandfather hadn’t bought the Jeep at all but had simply found it outside his house one day. At this point, I struggle to distinguish fact from myth. My Jeep is indestructible, as though the copper that encases it were an otherworldly material stronger than anything known on Earth. Its innards are also lined with copper, including the engine and moving parts. The engine has never broken down, the tyres have never punctured, and even the original stereo still works. My grandfather was a philosopher who studied the essence of mortality, and he detested the idea that his Jeep could be an eternal object. That’s why he devised a method to gradually degrade the vehicle and give it the chance to become mundane and perish like others of its kind. The ritual involved always carrying an iron bar in the Jeep. Whenever he entered or exited the vehicle, he would strike it with the bar with all his strength. Over time, the Jeep’s body began to show a few dents, which brought my grandfather some peace of mind. When my father inherited the Jeep, he also inherited the iron bar ritual. Before I learned to drive, my father taught me how to strike the stoic Jeep with all my might. In my teenage years, I thought my grandfather and father weren’t strong enough to break it, but when it was my turn to wield the bar, I realised how monumental the task of defeating the Jeep truly was. For decades, my father continued to strike it with all his strength, managing to inflict minor damage to the bodywork—daily and without fail, just like my grandfather. Many times, I saw the iron bar break under the force of impact, unable to withstand the clash with the immortal machine. When I turned twenty, my father handed me the keys to the Jeep and a demolition sledgehammer. He spoke to me about the natural order of things—that everything must have a beginning and an end, and that our Jeep could not be an exception. He handed me the sledgehammer as though it were a mythical sword and entrusted me with the mission to finish what he and his father had started. For years, I tried, day after day without fail. The sledgehammer soon broke, so I decided to innovate and experiment with different tools. Nothing worked. I tried hammers, bats, and medieval weapons, but the damage I inflicted was minimal—perhaps even less than that of my predecessors. My obsession with being the one to destroy the Jeep’s immortality kept me awake at night. I began to lose sleep, staring out of my window at the vehicle parked outside. At one point, I even started to believe that it regenerated itself at night, repairing the damage. On my wife’s insistence, I began therapy. During those sessions, I discovered something neither my father nor my grandfather had considered: I could accept that the Jeep was a perpetual entity, one that would outlive all living and inanimate things, and that nothing I or anyone else did would change that. With a child on the way, I dreaded the idea of passing on the Jeep’s curse. I chose to embrace acceptance and stopped striking the Jeep. I got rid of the tools meant to destroy the immortal vehicle. Placing a hand on its bonnet, I told it that it had won. I entrusted it with being eternal and witnessing the end of time. The truth is, the day I stopped striking the Jeep was the day it stopped working. I almost called a mechanic, but on reflection, I decided to grant the machine its well-earned rest.
