Driving a Car

By now I am absolutely certain:

Driving a car makes you unhappy

There is a very simple explanation for this:

When driving a car, I have to concentrate all the time, yet there is no opportunity for me to let out steam physically. Below threshold, there is an accumulation of hectic rush and stress. Nor does it matter if I am competing against others at high speed on the motorway or creeping along through the stop-and-go city traffic from red light to red light. And all the time I have to sit still. All I can do (and even that only if I am by myself) is rant.

Demonstrating to all the world what a superior driver I am through my comfortable sitting position will not help, either. Even feeling omnipotent in the big toe of my right foot on the gas pedal or in the small finger of my left hand on the tempomat cannot make up for it.  Consequently, I seem to be sitting ever so competently behind the wheel of a (super) strong machine with exquisite design and sparkling varnish, yet my vegetative system suffers a pressure that cannot be physically compensated anywhere.

Also, I am isolated from nature and my social environment when sitting in a car. I have to suppress all my physical needs as soon as I strip myself into one of those modern flukes. My position is more in the horizontal than upright, I have to remain immobile for hours on end and look through windows that get smaller and smaller the more modern my car gets. The only time when driving a car is halfway bearable is when you sit in a cabriolet (if the weather is fine) or in a big vehicle, such as a SUV or a VAN. But these options are not acceptable either; they are beyond “political correctness”.

Driving a car is not only unhealthy and depriving the body of all necessary exercise. It is also detrimental for the psyche. As I see it, this is the only way to explain how many car drivers become totally changed personalities when sitting behind the wheel of a car. They get caught up in aggressive behaviour that is otherwise totally uncharacteristic for them.

When I was still a smoker, there was at least the chance for me to unload my accumulated frustration by crushing my cigarette in the ash-tray (or even by throwing it out of the window). Neither is it advisable these days to take the risk and give yourself the satisfaction of flipping someone the bird or giving someone the finger.

Not to mention all the casualties and injured persons in traffic accidents, the massive environmental damage and the almost infinite amount of lost time.

Nor will the self-delusion that driving a car (especially if it is the right brand) is “the most beautiful experience in the world” do any good. There is no such thing as “joy of driving”. No car in the world will make anyone relax or recuperate, even if an entire industrial sector wants to make us believe it, and even if we fall victim to a truly ingenious marketing that makes us ready and willing to spend a small fortune on one of those glittering machines.

Driving a car is stylized to have an emotional component. In everyday-life, however, all it causes is hideous Disstress. The so-called Eustress is something you basically only experience once during your entire car-driving career: at the moment when, in an almost holy ritual, the provider hands over the car to you.

Leading managers or politicians do not drive a car, either. They have a chauffeur who does the driving for them. Whenever I have to use a car, I do the same: we have established that my dear spouse does the driving. 🙂

I, however, take my bike and enjoy life. And (almost) always, I arrive in a good mood and quite relaxed. It is just possible that this is the reason why I am a little more easygoing these days than I used to be.

RMD
(Translated by EG)