The Start
By working As a driver, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between driving a car and living my life. I, the “First Person,” am behind the wheel of my life, mainly calling the shots about which direction to go or how fast I drive. I am responsible for the maintenance and cleanliness of my life and the accidents or harms I cause others while driving (living).
“Life is a journey,” people keep saying, and I can’t agree more, but a journey is pretty much like life. This can easily be recognized by everyone; I will prove it. Both life and a car their sole purpose is to move through space and time, only at different speeds. Both have beginning and endpoints, and their journeys are the fun part about them, not the destination. Both need to be functioning to give you the outcome you’re looking for, and both can be easily broken.
When I was born, I woke up in the back seat of my parent’s life that they built on their own, as I will hopefully do someday. Sometimes the car is jammed with many other riders (siblings), and sometimes we are the only passenger. In some cases, there’s only one person behind the wheel, and most times, there are two parents, not necessarily both, or any of them know how to drive. Sometimes one of them is sick, addict, or just never learned how to drive and didn’t bother to learn. The best-case scenario happened to me; both parents were good drivers and switched places when they had to.
When I’m in the back seat, my life was controlled by the rules of my parent’s life and regulations of the country they lived in. Rules like I shouldn’t keep my parents distracted from the road because it can be dangerous. I can’t open the windows too low, so I don’t fall out or don’t catch a cold. I can’t trash our life with my childish garbage, and I have to keep my nose down, so I don’t bother the driver. I shouldn’t ask for too many stops because life requires the driver’s most attention since it is the one thing taking all of us from A to B.
Since the day I first started forming any understanding, I was instructed to pay attention to whoever is driving so when the time comes, I should know how to go and hopefully build my own life. I discovered that driving is how to operate the car and how to pay attention to the road, which ways to take, and which to avoid. How can I deal with other drivers on the road, and how frequently can I stop and rest. I found that getting there is what’s important, not how fast we get there.
Like many others, for sure, I didn’t like my parents’ car (life) looking from the back seat, didn’t like the speed, the view, the rules (oh, the rules), and the destination, but what do I know? Never driven in my life. Nonetheless, I had to stick in the back seat as long as possible, so I can get somewhere instead of nowhere. All the decisions my parents took regarding their life and how well they paid attention to the road eventually results in how nice a life they got me riding in. They inherited parts of their life and the way to drive from parents, but their actions and what they learned on the way contributed significantly to their life.
Where to drive is set by luck as much as how to go; there’s little we can do to change it. Some parents dare to relocate and start driving elsewhere for better driving roads or even for more minor bumps. Bumps of life are known to all; some are obvious and can be seen from a distance; others are hidden and come by surprise, especially if you weren’t paying attention. Some Bumps look small from far, but we don’t feel how deep it is until we go through it. Driving carefully is essential because the more deep bumps we go through, the worst of the damage that affects our lives.
We all want to drive a wonderful life, especially when we are cruising down the highway of spacetime and see a more admirable life driven by someone rich accelerate away on the left lane. Some of us envy the other driver; most of us feel motivated to work harder to change the parts that need to be changed to drive as fast or luck can get a similar life. Unfortunately, not all our wishes come true because we are still governed by laws that set for us our lives, in addition to the rules that we have to drive by on the road that makes it harder and harder to change.
Rules set by drivers who drove before us and accumulated from different times regulate how we operate to ensure safety, justice, and order so everyone can go on. Everyone needs to be safe while driving; we all need to get somewhere in a reasonable time frame and to pass that stop sign intersection in one piece. Laws set by nature or history are different from the rules I’m talking about here because some people are driven by these laws of where and how they were raised and disregard the restrictions that other drivers established to live by.
The car
Each car has four tiers that can’t move anywhere without it. So as life has four main aspects that we can’t move without. Health, Knowledge, Relationships, and Security are the four tiers of life. If I have a problem with any one of them, I will start driving slowly; if I don’t fix it, I’ll come to a complete stop. Those are the four tiers of your life because they need constant gaging. I have to check each and everyone, then I have to add to them constantly. If any of them get inflated by an object on the road, this will require your full attention.
A spare tire is a must in your life, as well as the skill to change it until you drive to a maintenance shop. The spare is patience that you will need to replace your flat tire until you fix the problem. The skill that will help you replacing the tire and driving with patience is meditation. Meditation is a skill that comes with practice like any other skill and not only will help you with replacing the tire but will help you down the road with paying attention, enjoying the journey, and keeping the engine heat down, so you don’t blow up your life.
The engine
of your life motivates you to do anything; it is your Desire. Love is the fuel of your life. True, biological reasons inspire us, like thirst and hunger, but we also love food and water as we love everything that we want. We should be careful of the grade of this fuel that we pour into our lives because low-quality Love (fake one) can destroy our lives. However, the best Love is not that expensive if we learn how to conserve and where to fuel from. Here is where the skill that we learned comes in handy because the grade of Love can always be checked by meditation.
The one rule of nature is “survival of the fittest.” The fittest is not necessarily the fastest, the smartest, bravest, or strongest. The most suitable is the most adaptable to change. Adaptation is the gear of this car-like life that helps you change from one speed to another without breaking down. Luckily adaptation is all automatic in our nature, but manual adaptation can help difficult situations when you need to adapt quickly to survive. It works hand in hand with your desires (the engine), so you can keep your motor running. Both the gear and engine need oil to run smoothly.
The oil that keeps everything running smoothly is prevention. Controlled prevention is what keeps your desires (engine) and adaptation (gear) going smoothly without buffering or breaking down. It provides acceptance to the losses that you might face on the road, so better train yourself and accepts them rather than take you in a surprise. Plus, prevention that you control is much better than prevention forced upon you by an outside force, like occupation, pandemic, or uncontrolled bad habits. Like any oil, prevention has to be renewed every once in a while, so you keep your edges sharp.
ABZU 