When I started driving, I lived on a very busy road on the outskirts of town, one that led out into the motorway.
Every morning, I would wake up early, dreading the drive to work. I would play and replay every single action I would take for the 13 or so mile, approximately 25 minute journey. It was torturous.
To make matters worse, my window faced the main road, and so I would look outside and see all these cars streaming past, nose to tail, and feel the panic and anxiety continue to slowly rise up, seemingly taking on a life of its own.
I would torture myself imagining how I was going to drive in that busy traffic, manouvering my way amidst busy experienced motorists in a rush to get to their jobs. I would stand at my window in between my morning tasks, getting dressed, hoping fervently that the traffic had died down, only for it to seem to have multiplied in intensity.
Soon enough, I would get outside, get into my little red Peugeot, do check after check, and with fear and trepidation, ease into the road, joining the throng of cars weaving their way through.
Once I was on the road, it felt like I was not breathing for the 20 minutes or so it took to get to work. Everything was so hard. I had to think about every gear change, every turn, checking of mirrors. So many mirrors! How do I look at the rear view mirror, and the side mirror, and the windscreen, and the speedometer, because God forbid I got a ticket, (despite the fact that I was driving at way below the speed limit) all in what seemed like the exact same time.
“Mirror, signal, manouvre,” the voice of my instructor kept going on and on in my head. I hated traffic jams. And right turns. Oh blasted right turns! It meant I had to slow down, check my mirrors, indicate, shift gears, and stop. Stop. Stopping meant moving on again. Moving on again meant stalling. Because the bite point only existed in my instructors ears. So stall it would be, in the middle of the road. With cars behind and to the side and front. I would want to scream.
Over time, with more practice, I became more confident. I started to believe that I could do this thing. I stopped dreading start and end times at work. Things began to be automatic. I didn’t have to think everything out. I could just do it.
And isn’t life just like that? When we begin something, the dread, the fear, the lack of confidence. We don’t know if it will work out. Everything seems so mechanical. So much to do, so little time. We wonder if we will ever master everything. In fact, many a time we dread starting, and we don’t start. Because all we can see is rows upon rows of cars. How will we get into the track? It’s so busy, so complicated.
And yet, we needn’t look at how long the queue is. Because, just like driving, all that matters is our car, and the one in front, and the lines on either side of us.
We can only control so much, we can only see so far. But we can believe that we will get to our destination. We can follow the routes we have planned, check our mirrors, stop when we need to, and when we stall, engage the car and start again.
We can prepare, and we must. We can plan, and we can execute. It will be hard to begin with. We will have to think everything out mechanically. We will make mistakes. And the more experienced “driver” behind us might shout a few expletives at us.
But soon enough, we will have put in enough hours to build our experience. It will get easier. We will learn the tricks of the trade. We’ll be confident enough to get on the motorway. To overtake others. To be on cruise control.
It will be our journey. We’ll own it. We’ll be grateful for the mentors and the teachers we’ll have had. But ultimately, it is our journey. To own. To take.
Whatever it is that we hope to achieve, all we can do is prepare, start and execute. To quote that oft cited Chinese proverb, “a journey of a thousand miles begins but with a single step.”
Should we veer off, which we might, we’ll need confidence in ourselves, we’ll need the lessons we’ve learnt, and the support of others, but most importantly, we’ll need the belief in our ability to actualise. The belief in that internal drive, that guide that moves us closer to that which we most desire.