Isn't ROAD TRIP and LIFE the SAME EXPERIENCE?

1974th BLOG POST

Long time since our family bought our first car in 2016, we were planning of some long road trip which we hadn’t experienced yet. The most that we tried was a journey from Mumbai to Daman which is not that exploratory as its around 200 kms something. I always wanted to achieve something like 1000+ kilometres by driving all by myself. After thinking a lot, we had this trip last month where all three of us went to Jhansi which is 1000+ kms away from where we stay. I still don’t have confidence on how to drive on mountains and ghats hence I wanted straight highways and didn’t want many adventures to take place. When you are with your parents, even walking on an empty road can lead to 100 warnings. You can imagine the state when you are on a road trip with them and that too driving on dangerous steep turns. Hence, to save myself from millions of instructions and taking care of my mental health, I chose a simple road to travel on my first ever Road-trip.

 

When you drive for 12-15 hours on a stretch all by yourself, there are numerous thoughts that run through your mind. Some stays whereas some disappears in the black hole that must be located somewhere in the brain – otherwise where does all these thought goes which we keep on thinking regularly. I ended up comparing the Road-trip with Life and found so many similarities in both these journeys that I got to understand why it is said that you learn a lot when you travel. Yes! But No for the people who travel only for social media. Traveling is like Meditation – in a form – where the way you see things are specific to you. The experience of seeing the very same thing might be different for everyone who are looking at something. Hence, to experience something vast within you, you must travel for yourself and not for digital platforms, friends or selfies.

 

There is a moment when you are running at your fastest speed say 100-120 kms/hr and you notice that you are not able to view the sceneries around you. I realized that I was missing on so many things- the cloud, the mountains, the greenery, the temples, the different colour formations in the sky etc. So, I slowed down my Car and started enjoying the view. After a point, I remembered that I also need to cover a specified distance on the same day to reach the destination I have to reach at. I speeded up again but with a conscious attempt to be at both the places – Driving fast as well as enjoying the things around me. I think about Life now. Isn’t it similar? We keep running in this hyper-professional target-oriented culture and realize after a point that we are missing time with family, children and friends. Then we try to rectify that and find that we have ended up screwing our professional life which have impacted our family life too. Then we understand how to maintain Work-Life Balance all by ourselves and walk on this path which keeps us sane and peaceful. How interesting, isn’t it?

 

When I was driving, I was thinking of not taking a break at all and try completing the whole journey in one-go itself but after my right shoulder started aching due to 6-hrs of continuous driving, I realized that taking break after some hours is essential if I have to drive so long. The same thing happens with life. We think of working a lot for weeks and months without taking break. We get into this hustling mode and perform our tasks like there’s no alternative to it. But after our medical reports tell us that you have become a successful person but at the cost of your health, you leave everything aside and make your health the priority over everything else. You, then, understand the importance of being healthy and making time for your body irrespective of being howsoever busy you are.

 

When we drive on highways, we get smooth roads as well as bumpy ones. The smooth road comes at a price – yes, I had to pay toll amount of Rs. 2800 in this journey. The bumpy ones are free. You can also avoid these toll roads and chose to travel by alternate bumpy roads – but, you have to travel few extra miles which also damages the condition of your car. Before starting this trip too, I had got my car serviced and spent another 10,000 bucks on it to ensure a smooth ride. In life, too, we must pay for a convenient lifestyle otherwise you can’t have the smooth days and nights – the way you dream of living. Life also shows you some good days where you just pass them off smoothly whereas sometimes even an hour is so bad that it’s more dangerous than bumpy roads. You must bear both if you have chosen to be on this journey. Alas, Life is a Journey which is not a choice but mandate.

 

While taking breaks, I assured that I don’t eat much so that I don’t feel sleepy. But still, on one of the many breaks, I ended up eating more than I had decided to fill myself with and it resulted to tricky situation for me as I was fighting back sleep for some hours while driving after that. In our daily life too, sometimes we end up consuming something more than we need which results into some difficult moments in life. If you end up spending a lot of money on useless things or time on people/mobile/television, there comes a judgement time when the experience of living life becomes terrible. You keep on regretting why didn’t you stop yourself from consuming unwanted stuffs more than you needed. It takes a lot of time after that to come back on track and experience the smoothness of life again. And then you decide that you’ll restrain yourself from being into bad habits even if they are meant to happen occasionally. You learn the art of living life.

 

The Road-trip has taught me more than this and many other aspects of life. I don’t know if anyone of you have also experienced the lessons of life being delivered to you while you are traveling, if not, then please try to travel next time with yourself without gadgets, useless friends or at places where there are less crowds and more monuments. Try reading your mind when you are traveling than sharing about your location with your friends and relatives. I’ll share more experiences in upcoming posts. Thanks for now. Hope you could relate with this post too. 😊

 

WRITING BUDDHA