Driving Under The Influence?

On the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers.  Passengers ride out their lives at the whim and speed of their drivers. Drivers are the decision makers, they decide the what, the when, the where, the why and the how to blaze a life trail.

You are a passenger whenever you sacrifice your better judgment to that of another on life altering matters, for instance:

• To accommodate the prevailing conventional wisdom, you decide to find a life companion of a different sex, despite knowing at your core that you are attracted to people of your same sex.
• To satisfy your parents you decide to go to any other school, different from that which you truly wanted.
• Not to anger your partner, you take and remain at a job that makes you miserable.
• On a more routine level, you defer to your partner the choice of your clothes, your hobbies, your food, etc.  

You get the picture, you allow others to make the decisions that are yours to make.

Proactive decision makers are the drivers on the road of life; everything, from the most insignificant to the more important issues are decided through a willful weighing of the pros and cons of the alternatives before them. Drivers tend not to defer the important decisions to others in their lives: They decide where they want to live and work, if and when to be coupled and with whom, if and when to have children, etc.

Yet, there is a hybrid category on the road of life few care to acknowledge, the backseat drivers: people who, despite being in the passenger seat, press on the imaginary breaks at the perception of a potential crash; they can’t help but blurt out their suggested route and they get easily annoyed when the driver dismisses their suggestion. Backseat drivers are oblivious to the fact they are not the ones at the wheel, they assume command, turning divers into chauffeurs who are there to take them where they want to go.

While this may work very well in real cars driving on real roads, driving under the influence of a backseat driver on the road of life makes you a passenger in your own life. You may be at the wheel, but you’ve allowed your backseat driver or drivers to take command of your life.  Should you continue down that road, it should be of no surprise to you to wake up one morning to the realization that your life went by you before you had a chance to live it.

We only have one shot at this experience we call life. It is incumbent upon us to give it a shot, pull the trigger, seize charge, take a chance, and have at it. The only guaranteed result is the knowledge that we did it our way, the way it’s supposed to be done, not in the shadows of the whims of another.

When it is all said and done, would you have driven under the influence, or would you have done it out of free will.  The choice is yours, now, let’s talk about you!