Growing up as teenagers, I and my younger brother, Idris, often had a way of getting ourselves enthused and enamoured when travelling a long distance on a commercial vehicle. We travelled mainly by road and we normally took the sixteen-seater buses.
In the heart of our journey, while most of the other passengers were asleep or seemed to be unconscious of the acceleration of our vehicle in relation to the movement of the other vehicles, Idris and I would get ourselves busy by keeping track of the vehicles that have overtaken or driven past us and those that we have overtaken and surpassed.
We abhored it when our vehicle was being overtaken by other vehicles so we would normally grimace at each other anytime our driver slowed down or had to stop on the way which allowed several vehicles to catch up with us and drive past in full speed.
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Our emotion often flowed in tandem with the motion of our vehicle; we would literally switch from a feeling of disappointment to that of excitement as soon as our driver reconfigured his movements and gradually unthrottled for the vehicle to regain its pace and outrun many of the motors that had moved past us and vice versa.
Idris and I often hoped to be lucky to get on a neat and fancy bus especially one with a young and smart-looking driver. We believed the model and the neatness of a vehicle as well as the age and the agility of the driver were factors that generally influenced the performance of the vehicle on the road.
However, over the years, I came to the realization that several uncontrollable and unforseen factors could largely impact the time taken for a vehicle to overcome other vehicles on the road or reach its destination. These could range from a tendency of the vehicle to develop a sudden fault on the way to the possibility of being randomly stopped and checked by the police and the road safety officials as well as delays due to accidents or intermittent traffic gridlock on the road.
In a particular encounter, the vehicle we were onboard developed a minor engine fault on the road so the driver had to stop to fix the problem which took him about twenty-five minutes to get around. In that momentary delay, several other vehicles inevitably accelerated past us. However, in about fourty-five minutes after we had proceeded with our journey, we noticed a red Honda Civic sedan that had earlier driven past us was being held up at a police check point.
Also, at a couple of kilometres to the point we had to take a northeast turn, a grey Toyota Sienna minivan was parked by the roadside with the driver and some of the passengers nursing the faulty vehicle similar to the experience we had had about an hour ago. Then, a white Hilux van which had been maintaining a close distance with our vehicle for a long time suddenly appeared from behind us an directly paced up north as we veered towards the northeast turn.
The general lesson to be drawn from this experience is that life’s journey entails the alternation of acceleration and friction which makes one to be highly vulnerable to being overtaken by another. In life, you will be overtaken by other people, some of whom had probably looked up to you at some point, as much as you will be positioned to overtake others some of whom who had been way ahead of you. This alternating movement is a continuous process until everyone in the open race reaches their respective destinations.
Sometimes you probably feel unsettled at the thought of some of your peers or juniors at school or at other points in your life who seem to be doing better than you at the moment. However, when you critically examine your life, you’d probably realize that you are not doing badly at all and you only need to keep moving with a sharp focus on your goal or life’s purpose.
Like our vehicle and the grey Toyota Sienna, some people encounter major career or professional setbacks in their lives due to personal deficiencies or competency issues they need to fix by themselves to be able to forge ahead in their journeys.
Like the red Honda Civic sedan, some people’s major problem come from their adversaries or detractors who constantly seek to challenge and falsify their competence, grace and worthiness. These people may likely waste much of their time being on the defensive rather than accelerating.
And like the white Hilux van, some people may make some friends or enemies along the way only for them to discover sooner or later that the thrill or the scheme is only short-lived and the consequences of the distraction therefrom could be telling and enduring.
In life, everyone has got their own race to run. Even though the individual courses may meet and influence one another at some point, every individual has their unique, purpose-driven destination. When the destination is clear, the miles to be covered, and the friction to be overcome are easily settled.