Driving lessons from John

I will always remember my driving instructor, John. John, if you are reading this, I love you. As soon as I started driving on my first lesson, he kind of spoke very loud with his thick Aussie accent and said, “stay in your lane.” I used to overlap on other lanes, so hence the phrase that would become a mantra in my Life. This lasted for the entire session and a few more after that, until I got the message. Stay in your lane. Sometimes, you meet people who change your life forever. Apart from the delicate and wonderful driving instructor he was, John was about to, without knowing it, give me one of the keys to understanding and experiencing Life.

I was a bit scared to drive, and when I took lessons with John, he made me comfortable straight away. He was over a certain age, let’s say he was in the mature part of Life. Anyway, he was always full of Life advice. When I was complaining about being surrounded by too many cars so I couldn’t turn in my street, he would nonchalantly say “they are just being on the road like you” and this would calm me down straight away.

I remember telling him that I didn’t know when to insert myself safely on the road, and he would say “if you can walk, you can drive.” He had this capacity to answer my questions and deflate my stress with a grounded voice and driving hacks that I still use to this day.

The point I’m making here is, we all drive a vehicle. This vehicle is our Human Self. And when we don’t know how to drive, we freak out. We freeze. We run away. We have accidents. We make mistakes. When those happen, we tend to diminish ourselves, as if us not knowing how to drive was unsurmountable. So many layers of beliefs and conditioning come into play when we drive our own vehicle. I won’t get into details here, this will be the subject of many other articles. It’s all part of the human experience.

And sometimes, when we know how to drive, we choose to speed up and end up crashing our vehicle. If we are lucky, we are the only one hurt. If we are not, we end up crashing in someone’s property and involve innocent humans. We might recover from it, or it might be fatal. Either way, this is our responsibility. We drive our own vehicle, and this is our foot on the gas and brake pedals (for fellow manual drivers out there, don’t forget the clutch). We are the main driver in our Life. Owning this and knowing that we are fully responsible for our actions. As wise, silly, or impulsive they are, this is hard to swallow.

Acknowledging that simple fact will help shift all the negative behaviors and complaints we have about Life, because no matter what happens out there, we always have the choice. Every decision we make is either shrinking us or expanding us. Every decision we make does not only involve us, but others. Every decision we make has short term repercussions and long-term effects. Positive or negative. When we understand this fact on all levels of our Being, we will stay in our own lane. But we need to take it easy on ourselves. We need to have patience, and compassion for ourselves.

We all have a vehicle, and we must learn to use it properly, for our own benefit, and for the benefit of others. With a clean, properly functioning vehicle and a full tank, we can go anywhere we want. We just have to want it. We will learn to drive properly, respect the traffic laws, fully aware that other vehicles are just trying to go home safely. Just like us.

Stay in your lane, and enjoy driving your car, because this is the best you can do for yourself and others.

With love and gratitude,

Caroline

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