Traffic in Hyderabad reaches manic proportions during peak business hours. I sat in a van with one of my work colleagues and observed him driving. He blew the horn unnecessarily, hardly checked his mirrors, drifted in to adjacent lanes without warning and drove over the bumpy parts of the roads without discretion. I checked myself every single time I wanted to say something critical, because I realised that his driving was part of his training, part of his psychology. It's the way traffic runs in this crowded city.
To distract myself, I considered an analogy to the van-ride: "How often do we check the rear-view mirror of our lives? The side mirrors that reveal when we're crowding out other people? How often do we blow the horn of our achievements when it's not required? Or choose to drive through the bumps which damage our bodies when they're avoidable?"
It's part of our training. We live subconsciously, accepting patterns of thought and behaviour which we believe are right. Until someone who has experienced a safer, better organised, less stressful system, challenges our established normal.
Then, we have a choice. What's important is to be teachable - open to instruction from the right sources. Let's make our roads better. Our lives richer. Change more conscious.
To distract myself, I considered an analogy to the van-ride: "How often do we check the rear-view mirror of our lives? The side mirrors that reveal when we're crowding out other people? How often do we blow the horn of our achievements when it's not required? Or choose to drive through the bumps which damage our bodies when they're avoidable?"
It's part of our training. We live subconsciously, accepting patterns of thought and behaviour which we believe are right. Until someone who has experienced a safer, better organised, less stressful system, challenges our established normal.
Then, we have a choice. What's important is to be teachable - open to instruction from the right sources. Let's make our roads better. Our lives richer. Change more conscious.