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Driving is a Religious Experience

By thescian on July 18, 2008.

Driving: It's half a ton of steel strapped under your bum and barreling down the road at breakneck speed. This is as crazy as it gets. Driving is, of course, a religious experience. What else could it be! It's nuts and people love it. A reasoning head would not place itself inside a steel cage and move forward with explosive liquids - especially if that head considers the road causality statistics (one million in 1998, WHO study).

Living entails risks, self-created or otherwise, isn't it? Stalking a prey through the dense forest risking snake bites, speeding on a road where getting pulped is a distinct possibility; it's just how it is. At times, I just wish to be a rock. But even then, I may be picked up by a bored child and whacked against something, and there's always erosion - that agonizing slow torture where wind and water wear you down....

For the record, I don't have anything against safe driving (I hold a lot against religion, though).

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This is exactly why I really dislike travelling by car - stupid amounts of kinetic energy, all piloted by ordinary people, most of whom are so blasé about the whole thing that they never pause to consider what would happen if anything went wrong. Scares the pants off me. (Buses and trains much less so. I can't quite decide if that's rational or not.)

I call it... the tao of pavement.

Being that I am somewhat of a motorhead, you bring up an interesting analysis. To me, driving is a lot like life itself, a reflection, and a bit like meditation.

Try commuting to work by bicycle for a few weeks and you'll transition from organized religion into a serious state of zen.

There is no other way to deal with the concept that you could be crushed flat in microseconds with no warning, and still enjoy the ride, the sweat, the cramp in the thighs, the wind in your hair.

:D

See God on the way to work, did we? ;)

By anonymous (not verified) on 18 Jul 2008 #permalink

>See God on the way to work, did we? ;)
I work from home (watched over by god a.k.a wife) :-)