Life is Like A Pothole in The Road

I was driving my car with my little sister to the shop on the weekend to buy sweets. We regularly go to the same shop to buy sweets, there’s only one route as it’s so close to our home.

On the way back, it’s pitch black and it's raining. The drive is smooth and we are one roundabout away from home and then BANG! I hit a disgusting pothole in the road. I didn’t see it coming at all! It was pitch black and there’s hardly any lighting down the road.

A few hours later, I get back into my car and a light on the dashboard pops up indicating to me that my car tire is now damaged. Please bear in mind I had just spent £120 per tire on a new set so I was particularly pissed off.

I dropped my sister home and went to my local supermarket to get air for the car tires. 10 minutes later my tires were fine, I was on the road again looking out for potholes.

If you’re a driver or have at least been inside the car when a driver hits a pothole, the anger and anxiety the driver immediately develops are insane. The first thing they tend to say is; “Great, well that’s a new tire needed” followed by potentially pulling over and checking the car for damages. The whole entire situation can really dampen your day.

Life is very much like the potholes we hit in the road. Our lives can be running smoothly, we can be very content with everything and all of a sudden something rocks our world. Maybe someone has died, maybe you’ve lost your job, come across financial issues or there’s someone around pissing you off.

Here are a few ways we can compare potholes in the road to human life:

1. Potholes can come in all different shapes and sizes, but regardless of this, they can still do damage to our tires the same way negative situations can do damage to our mental health/lives.

2. You cannot predict the future the same way you cannot see a pothole coming.

3. When your tire is damaged you will have to get it repaired or you will use your spare one the same way you will seek to heal the situation or call on your support group.

4. If you’re lucky enough to spot a pothole from a distance then trying to avoid is sometimes impossible, you just have to hold your breath and hope for the best. Similarly, sometimes we do things that have to happen but may trigger others and cause a commotion. You cannot please everyone.

5. When you’re in the passenger seat and the driver hits a pothole, there’s absolutely nothing you could have done to stop this, the same way we cannot control unfortunate events that happen in our lives.

6. When you take a trip down the same road on a different day, you should remember that there is a pothole there and take extra caution to avoid it. Similarly, you won’t purposefully allow yourself to go down the same situation twice as you’ve learned your lesson.

Ladies and gentlemen, your life is just one big road with a couple of unavoidable potholes. Some of you will be driving on really bad roads with a few too many potholes for your liking and some of you will be driving on beautifully smooth, fresh tarmac.

At the end of the day, consider yourself lucky you’re on the road literally and figuratively. Some people don’t have a driving license and some people will hit a pothole so bad their car breaks down, the same way life can hit people so badly they may choose to walk away from it.

As long as you’re behind the wheel, you’re going somewhere.

Originally published on Medium: shamarm.medium.com