Dangerous Driving...?

A few weeks ago I made the 3 and a bit hour drive up to the Parentals in the Farmlands to get my car MOT'd.  It's a drive I am very familiar with, and know pretty much like the back of my hand - although I still set my SatNav each time I make the journey, but that's another story.

As usual I made the journey late into the night, setting off from London at 9.30pm so that I could miss the traffic on the Car Park that is the M25 London Orbital.  Firmly cosied down in my PJ's (I know - what if I needed to stop for any reason...) and with the iPod on the go, I set off...and I was thwarted in every direction.  Road works on the M25, road works on the M40, a diversion on the M40, then a Diversion when my exit onto the M6 was closed, which took me right through the centre of Birmingham and into No Mans Land.  Hellish.

At about 1am I hit the A41, a single lane road in the Farmlands, full of twists and turns and blind corners, and possibly the most frustrating road in England due to the myriad of articulated vehicles and tractors that seem to think it's a great idea to hold up us normal cars who JUST WANT TO GET TO WHERE THEY'RE GOING!  It is a highway fraught with Road Rage.  Namely mine.

And, after 4 hours of diversion hell, I got stuck behind a Milk Lorry.

By this point in the 'should have been an easy ride but turned into the drive from hell' journey I was just about ready for a cup of tea and a sit down. 

And then it happened.

Blue lights and sirens behind me.

I pull over, thinking that they're after the Milk Lorry because of the drivers obvious inconsideration of my need for a cuppa.  But no, the Milk Lorry continues, and the Policeman comes towards MY car.

At this point I metaphorically soil myself, and the fleeting thought of, 'they've caught up with me,' flits through my mind as unfounded paranoia (I really haven't done anything worthy of 'being caught up with' for!) takes a momentary grip.

As the policeman makes his way ominously to the car I try and look innocent of anything I may be accused of.  Innocent is not a good look on me. Then I remember I'm wearing my PJ's.  Oops.  Mature starting place, I think not.

He asks me if I've been drinking, at which I laugh (not a good idea), as my driving is, I quote, 'all over the place, and very erratic.' 

I stop laughing.

He is pacified with the explanation that I've just driven up from London, have had the journey from Hell, and that my erratic driving was just my attempts at trying to find a place to overtake the blessed Milk Lorry that was thwarting my attempts at getting to the Parentals and embedding myself in the Sofa with the much needed Tea.  And he waves me on my way.

I make it home, in one piece, to the desired cuppa and laughs from the Parentals who know my driving too well and are surprised I've not been pulled over more often.  Encouraging.

And I got to thinking. 
I know that drive, I know the destination, I know the twists and turns and I know that, even stuck behind a Milk Lorry going at 40 miles an hour, I would have been home in 20 minutes.  Yet, still I felt the need to drive in such a way that I appeared drunk to a bystanding Police Officer.  For what?  To get past the Milk Lorry and shave another 5 minutes off the time it took me to get back?

I think we do that quite often.  Not only in our cars, but in our lives.

We each journey in different ways and in different seasons.
We think we know what the journey of the season will be like, how long it will take us to get where we're headed and what the conditions will be, and we even sometimes wear metaphorical PJ's because we think we'll not have to stop for anything.

And then, 20 minutes away from home, we get frustrated at how long it's taking, by the other people who are on the same journey but who are going slower than we would like to, by people who 'get in our way', by our desire to 'just BE THERE already.'

We drive dangerously.

The stop I was forced to make by the police meant that the last part of the journey home took me just as long as it would have, had I patiently stayed behind the Milk Lorry.  And, it would have been WAY less stressful, with one less 'potential soiling of myself' incident.

I wrote a few days ago about 'Dead Poets and Dreaming,'...about how we need to leap into the journey and take risks and move into the unknown, trusting that all will become clear...

But, there are moments on the journey when the old adage, 'more haste, less speed,' is so true - that when we're moving in the flow, when we're on our way, we need to think about the way we're 'driving'.

Sometimes we make the journey harder than it needs to be by rushing.

This, I think, is a lesson worth learning.