From the last blog post, I believe we established the fact that life is a journey and inspired by a recent trip I took, I decided to pen down some rules of the road which can also apply to our life journey.
Rule One: Overtake Every Trailer!
This rule might be the most sacrosanct of all the rules because it is one that must be obeyed on every single journey. Trailers are basically big trucks that carry large cargos from tankers transporting fuel to trucks full of cows heading to some market to be sold (or Obi Cubana’s house) and so you are bound to see a trailer on every trip and on every road. That’s why this rule is so important because trailers are very big which means they can be quite slow and being behind them can slow you down and make you feel frustrated and they also completely block your view so you can never see anything beyond them. How does this apply to life? There are things that will block our view and prevent us from seeing the bigger picture or even prevent us from knowing there is one and when we come upon such circumstances; our immediate reaction should be to overtake them. Now don’t get me wrong, overtaking those trailers is sometimes very difficult especially when you are on a two-lane road, in fact on this last trip, it took one particular driver more than 5 tries before he was finally able to overtake. The point is this, whatever seems to slow you down, frustrate you or just hinder your hope is not meant to remain your core focus and you ought to do whatever it takes to overcome (overtake) it. You may not be successful on your first try and you may feel overwhelmed because the trailer is always bigger but remember that David defeated Goliath and so you can too.
Rule Two: Watch out for potholes!
I don’t know where you’re reading this from but in Nigeria there are some pretty bad roads and it is important that you watch out for them because they can cause great harm ranging from damaging cars to causing road accidents. You always want to approach them with caution, slow down if necessary and gently manoeuvre your way out of them and if you take all this cautious steps, you’ll be able to pass safely through and find yourself on the other side. There are many “potholes” in life, bumps along our life journey that we never expect and most times we are not prepared for. When we encounter these bumps, it’s important that we remember that they are just bumps, temporary shakings and nothing more. We still have our whole journey ahead of us and while potholes can be painful and incredibly jarring, they never last no matter how long it feels like you’ve spent in them. Life is full of potholes, situations that shake us and make us feel like we’re sinking but in reality they are only a small aspect of our journey and if we choose to keep moving, we’ll soon find ourselves on a smooth road again heading towards our destiny.
Rule Three: Have a friend on the road
The trip I went on was a really long one and trust me, so is life. Something always amazes me on my trips though and that is the fact that the driver almost always seems to know another driver on the road. Sometimes they might even slow down long enough to high-five each other especially when they’re heading in opposite directions, sometimes they flash their headlights at each other and other times they just shout greetings from their windows. I always find it cool and a little comical and often wonder how they seem to recognize themselves so fast because we are both moving and there are other vehicles on the road. The lesson I picked from this interactions is the importance of friendship. The driver is usually isolated, alone in his driver seat on a very long journey and while we passengers usually have the company of each other, the driver has no one to talk to. We all know the dangers of isolation and a lot of people unfortunately experienced it during the height of the pandemic which also saw an increase in mental health challenges. It is not a situation anyone wants to be in especially on the long journey which is life. Not everybody is going to be your person obviously, drivers hardly talk to passengers after all, but they always seem to light up when they see their fellow driver-friends. So, all we need to do is to find our people as we journey across life and this doesn’t mean you’ll have everything in common, it just means that there will be some ties that bind. Our first friends are usually our family members but in case you didn’t have a very good family situation, that’s still okay because friends can become family too. No matter what you’ve been through, never give up on finding companionship because this journey is too long for you to do it alone especially because you were not meant to.
I can’t lie though, the ultimate friend is Jesus Christ because He is that friend that sticks closer than a brother and He willingly gave His life for us all. (Proverbs 18:24, John 15:13)
It turns out that there’s a lot you can learn from going on a road trip, so much so that there has to be a part two of this blog post. So watch out for the finale in my next blog post, until then my fellow sojourners.
