11/7 Whenever I’m driving home from the train station, I like to play this game where I try to touch the steering wheel as little as possible for the duration of the trip.
Keeping score is easy - I just count every second my hand is touching the wheel. Every journey I see if I can beat my best score for lowest amount of seconds. To make things more fun and interesting, I also keep track of my score on each separate road along the way.
Think of it as a golf course: each “hole” (street) has a different par and the lowest number of “strokes” (seconds) for each “hole” (street) the better. Then you tally up your total at the end. Simple.
I usually get my best scores at night, when there’s less traffic on the road, and I can take frequent “trips to Scotland” (i.e. across the double yellow lines) (hint: they drive on the other side of the road in the UK).
Strategy tips: The best scoring way of driving is to pretend the steering wheel is like a hot iron or stove, and just touch it a second at a time, making small corrections as needed (note: there are a lot of straight back roads on my way home. This method is less advisable on multi-laned curvy roads with traffic, but who am I to ruin your fun? Do what you need to do to score well, I always say (or at least I just said)).
You can also “steer” a little with your gas and brake pedals, I’ve found, thus minimizing your hand-to-wheel time. Accelerating tends to straighten your wheel, slowing down makes it turn more in whatever direction it’s already going.
There’s a great kind of high that occurs when you get your car pointed in just the right direction and go for like ten or fifteen seconds without touching the wheel. Especially in traffic. You feel like Jeff Bridges in the movie Fearless.
As usual, I’ve learned a lot of life lessons through this game (and by the way, almost everything in my life is a parable with a lesson at the end - haven’t you gotten that by now?)
I have learned that all corrective action in life tends to be based on compensating in the other direction. It‘s that basic law of physics: “Any reaction must be met with an equal and opposite reaction.” You’re going too fast so you step on the brakes... You‘re heading too much towards the left so you steer towards the right.
If you’re steering in the wrong direction, it makes no sense to steer even more in that direction.
This might seem like a no-brainer, but to my eyes it looks like the world has a lot of trouble understanding this concept. The world tends to respond to unfavorable actions with the same reaction and not the opposite.
Like punishing a killer with the death penalty. To me that says, “Killing is wrong - so we’ll kill you.” How is the problem of killing solved by killing more?
Or bombing Afghanistan because the twin towers got bombed. “It’s wrong to bomb - so we’ll bomb you.” Again, the solution to the problem of bombing is surely not more bombing.
Or responding to a person who treats you poorly by treating them poorly.
Remember: The laws of physics state that only an equal and opposite reaction can negate the initial action. Fighting fire with fire just makes more fire. You must fight fire with water. Fighting hate with hate only makes more hate. You must fight hate with love. You must fight negativity with positivity.
When you’re going the wrong way, it makes no sense to steer the wheel even further in the wrong direction. You must make your corrections by compensating in the other direction.
But make sure you don’t overcorrect either.
I’ve learned that the worst way to play the driving game is to oversteer: if I’m headed in the wrong direction, I must resist the impulse to correct by overcompensating in the other direction. Because while that approach may temporarily correct the problem, ultimately I‘ll just be headed off course again and I’ll have to make another adjustment back the other way.
My life tends to be a lot like that. I don’t like the way I’m going so I overcorrect in the other direction. After a while I tend to end up steering towards the middle, but only after a number of unnecessary turns.