I had undertaken driving classes last week. The instructor did not know the languages I knew or understood, and I barely managed to make sense of his directions. In spite of that, I learnt driving. I also learnt much more, something that I had not bargained, nor paid for.
Like I told the instructor, along with the driving lessons, I was also learning another language: free of cost! He found my logic very amusing, and wanted to know how come I was not upset that he was not fluent in languages other than his mother tongue. Well, I did not have a choice. I had to learn driving: he was equipped to teach me. I could not afford to complain. To his credit, he knew certain basic words in English, and the rest, I could decipher.
What I learnt was much more than just learning to drive. I learnt how much control it gave you to be behind the steering, but I also admired the fact that he was willing to trust a novice with his life (The vehicle did not have supplementary controls). This confidence that he had in my ability to steer the vehicle without ramming into anything or anybody, obviously made me more cautious and alert.
I also learnt the fine art of balancing the clutch and the brake, for movement control of the vehicle while starting. His instructions of ‘half-clutch, brake, one point accelerator’ keep ringing in my ears even now! How simple it sounds; yet how difficult it is to achieve that one-point control! It taught me how to balance feelings and thoughts in my mind. It made me reflect as to how important it is to think before we feel, to avoid jerks, to tide over speed-breakers and to make sure the people we are travelling with in our journey do not feel the pressure of riding with us.
I guess we need to reflect that in our relationships. When to press the issue, when to let go, how much to pursue something, and when to draw the line… It is after all, about balancing. When I remove my feet from the clutch too fast, the vehicle stalls. If I remove it gradually, but then simultaneously accelerate, the vehicle moves forward smoothly.
He took me into lanes I would not have dreamt of going, if I was driving on my own! I would have parked the vehicle and walked it. But no, he insisted on putting me through a sheer torture of maneuvering through narrow lanes, in between huge contraptions of heavy vehicles, all the while urging me to be careful, to pay attention to the aspect of judgment and speed. Like how we form relationships, which are turbulent, and sometimes give them up halfway just because we do not have a person by our side guiding us through the stormy days, or simply do not have the mental or the emotional strength to see it through successfully..
Life is full of ups and downs. Climbing uphill requires much more dexterity than going down an incline. The former requires us to apply pressure on the accelerator; the latter, perfect control over the vehicle so that we do not lose control of the vehicle.
Isn’t that true of life too? When things seem to be going smooth, we tend to lapse in our efforts to be in control of a situation, and when the going gets tough, the strain we put ourselves through, trying to sail through taxes us and wrings us out emotionally.
How much simpler would life be, if we had an instructor with us all the time, with supplementary controls, telling us what to do! But we need to learn some lessons on our own… and the analogy of going for driving classes helped me to identify my own instructor : My thinking, rational self, who is more often than not lost in the crowd of unhealthy, irrational thoughts, which serve no useful purpose than being speed-breakers.
Mohana Narayanan
September 26,2009
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