This is a true story. You’re a 12-year old girl in a car, and the driver is falling asleep. A few times the car sort of goes off the road, and the driver complains that he is very tired. And then it happens: the car is in a head-on collision with a bakkie, and everyone dies in the crash, except the 12 year-old girl. Even her mother, sitting next to her, dies. Now there is a lot about this story that is analogous to real life.
1) There are numerous warnings of an impending crash
2) Passengers (aka consumers) place their hope and faith in someone else for their fate, someone who is driving everyone in the same ‘vehicle’. In other words, responsibility for one’s life is given over to someone else. Think that is a wise thing?
3) Even parents and those who know better trust that a nameless someone else knows what they are doing (in the same way we trust technology to save us)
4) Despite the fact that I am sure the driver had, on several occasions, imagined the consequences of falling asleep, he eventually succumbed to sleep. Possibly, in the moment before a bloody death, he woke up (the 12 year-old said everyone started screaming before the crash).
5) We are sleep-driving into the future. We’re dimly aware of the consequences of our failure to change what we are doing. It seems like no big deal to just keep going, but it turns out, to just keep going could be the most expensive choice – collectively – we make with our lives.
6) What could we have done? Admitted that we are not strong, fast, brave or good enough – simply say, “I’m not sure if I know what I am doing.” That’s a good start.
7) Then consider those around you. Do they know what they are doing?
8) Then stop the car, get out and get some fresh air. Move your body. Feel the wind on your face. Eat or drink something. Rest and refresh.
9) Resume your journey or resume your life with a clear sense of purpose - knowing where you are going, and what the consequences of your journey (and arriving at your destination are)
10) Consider others, and you also take care of yourself.
The car we are driving in has terrible storms on its path. One after another. They swing buy with labels attached. Dolly, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike, Karina, Josephine. Each of them violently pushes the car along but each time there is a miraculous escape. And we keep on driving.
The storms give way to desert, and we find the next gas station is probably too far for us to reach on our fuel tank. We drive faster as we become more anxious (even though driving slower might actually save fuel). Somehow, driving on fumes, we arrive at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Just as we turn in, just in time, a big tanker truck turns in, filled with fuel. The station has empty for a week, but we’re in luck.
We keep driving, noticing the farmlands are either flooded or withered.
As we enter the city, at the end of a long drive, and a long day, we notice parts of the road eaten away by fierce waves. We drive, literally over seaphone, staying on the edge of road that remains. Beyond the watery grave are the flicker of fires further in the darkness of the city (must be another power failure). Tyres smouldering in the street, shop windows broken. Street posters talk about interest rates, unemployment and recession. People squabble over fruit in a fruit stall. We drive by all of this, sleepy from the long drive. We finally arrive at a house in the suburbs. Everything looks fine, except we already know nothing longer is.
We go inside your home and after watching some television, drinking some hot chocolate you go to sleep. Our beds are burning as we go in our sleep to wherever we go, far far from the real world.
And the next day, we drink our coffee, grab our keys, and start up our cars. We expect to carry on like this indefinitely. We don’t have a plan for what comes after this; on that fateful morning when we turn the key and the fuel gauge reads empty, or a mob of hoodlums (who have reached their financial and cultural nadir) arrive on your driveway to eat the rich. We don’t have a plan because in our sleepy state we think we might not need one. And that is how we crash head-on into reality.
Yeah, that sounds like human nature, no need to change what we are doing unless we are forced to.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Take weight loss. It is so hard for most of us to lose weight before our health suffers. There is something awry if you always have to be threatened before you do something that makes sense anyway. Have consumers become like sheep?
ReplyDeletewhat ever else u do (or dont do) dont stop writing THIS particular column Wayne
ReplyDelete@ Wayne - Thanks. As long as things are (not so) cool I'll try to keep this a regular fixture.
ReplyDelete