Dad's Advice

The average person spends 121 seconds every year trying to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk.  The average person spends 383 minutes each year trying to find the right socks to go with their outfit.   The average person spends 1305 minutes every year staring into space.  The average person spends 42 hours each year waiting for youtube videos to load.  The average person spends 2 weeks each year trying to remember something before giving up.  The average person spends 5 months each year lost in sleep.


And, I just spent about 180 seconds making all those numbers up.


But there are some numbers that I actually wanted to work out.  I usually drive what comes out to about an hour everyday; that is approximately 60 minutes for those unfamiliar with the metric system.  After throwing in the random extra trip to somewhere where I am sure to get lost and topping it off with a little sprinkle of traffic, we are looking at about 80 minutes a day.  So let's assume that I drive this much only 25 days out of the month.  And assuming this isn't a leap year, there should still be about 12 months in a year.  So that works out to be about 1.5 million seconds every year.


That is a whole lot of seconds.  You know those finger exercises that are supposed to burn one calorie each time you do them?  I'm talking about the ones where you extend your finger up vertically, fold it back down, and then fling it outward horizontally.  Those take about second.  If you drove as much as I did and did those the entire time, you would probably be looking at some Olympic gold medals.  And naturally, as an Olympic athlete, I'd be snobby and think I was better than everyone else in the world.  You'd all hate me for it even though I would be the best in the world but lets leave the predicament of how we love to build people into larger than life figures only because doing so makes us feel less guilty about not measuring up to their standard until we decide to break them down so that we feel better about ourselves... for another time.  Lets go back to me being an Olympic athlete because I'm starting to like the sound of that.  So if I got to a point where I was that successful, I'd probably start falling prey to the idea that I have a good idea of what I am doing.  Maybe not with being an Olympic athlete, but with something more mundane like driving, I think we all start thinking that at some point or another.


The other day, I was driving back home with my Dad in the car.  Naturally, he was explaining to me the intricacies of driving and, of course, I was "listening."  As I took great note about how each of my turns was a little off and my seat wasn't in the correction position, I was searching for that perfect equilibrium where I could stay close enough to the speed limit to be safe from the fuzz and far enough from the speed limit to succumb my inner rebel.  You can't go too fast but going too slow isn't really an option either so you have to find that that point where everything is just right.  Now if you have ever tried to find to find a point of balance for something, you know its impossible to do unless everything is perfectly still.  With my phone's vivacious vibrations promising the arrival of an email, a text message, or even, God permitting, a facebook notification, the equilibrium point was not about to be found anytime soon.  Oh yeah, I was still listening to what my Dad was saying too.


Then he dropped something that kinda shook me.


"Each of those cars out there can go pretty fast if someone just pushes down on a pedal, just like that same pedal you have in your car."


I heard it once.  Then, I heard it a second time.  I heard it a third time and a fourth time.  I had to repeat it to myself a couple of times to make sense of it.  It was the first thing he said that kinda stuck.  I was trying to figure out what he meant.  What was the purpose of him saying that? I wasn't sure but I did realize that he wasn't talking about driving, or, at the very least, I wasn't thinking about it anymore.


Every car that was on the freeway that night came with a pedal.  When you let the weight of your foot push down that pedal, your car would go faster.  When you lessened that same weight, your car would slowly slow down.  It wasn't the model or brand of your car, the race or gender of your passengers, the size of your tires or the quality of your bass, or even who you, the driver, were that made the difference.  It was that choice.  Do you want to speed up or slow down?  Push down that pedal or let it push up?


We all have choices.  Choices that decide the course of our lives.  Some of these choices turn into exit ramps and construction detours.  Some of these choices turn into irrelevant billboards or creative license plates.  Some of these choices change our lives while others just change our moods.  Nevertheless, life is a game of choices where the decisions we make set the tone for who we are.


Many times, we find our selves at a point where we forget what we are capable of.  We forget how much of an effect our choices can have.  We underestimate ourselves to such great lengths that we belittle our own accomplishments in our fear of taking on an increasingly daunting task.  Our greatest critic is ourselves--our greatest detractor, our memories.  We battle this beast with all the sharpened weapons of confidence, wit, and hope but are met with the seething spirit of fear, ignorance, and doubt.  It is a battle each one of faces and each one of us has to overcome.  Without this struggle, our accomplishments are meaningless and our successes are baseless.  This struggle is one that drives every choice we make.  It's what makes us speed up on the freeway and move ahead in life.  It's what makes us slow down and fall behind.


This battle is one that will be fought today, tomorrow, and until the last gasp of air leaves the tiny packets of alveolus of our lungs.  Not just my lungs, not just your lungs, this battle will be fought by each of us.  Like any soldier caught up in the heat of battle, we find ourselves focused on victory; we keep our eyes on the prize.  In doing so, what we often come to miss is the prize we seek may the same as our neighbor.  The battles we face may be the same as our neighbor.  The hardships we endure may be the same as our neighbor. And being in such a similar state, sometimes we need to take into account how similar we all really are. Recognizing much the same, Plato once said:


Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.