The other day while I was driving my car and was stuck in bad traffic, I kept thinking about the amount of time of our lives that we spend in the car and what struck me was that for every age of our life, we sit in different seating positions in the car and with different sets of people.
It is just that life passes by us so fast that we never see the significance of this or how the dots connect very nicely.
Let me make an attempt to put down how an ideal person’s (male) age and stages of life evolves depending on the seat that he is occupying in the car:
Ages 1- 4: You sit in the front seat on the mother’s lap with the father driving the car and you watch the world around with curiosity.
Ages 5 – 16: You have now moved to the back of the car while being driven and you ask lots of questions to your parents as this is the time of building your identity during the course of these years.
Ages 16 – 18: This is a stage of occupying the driver’s seat with the father on the passenger’s seat giving driving lessons to the son/daughter. This is a frustrating time as every mistake of yours while driving the car can get reprimanded by your father.
Ages 18 – 20: Now you have reached an age where you proudly drive the car with a gang of friends and great music blaring from the stereo. This is the feeling of ‘Cool’.
Ages 20 – 22: This is when you sit in the driver’s seat with the father in the passenger’s seat and mother in the back seat. This is when the responsibility of taking them everywhere comes to you and you love that as you get to drive the car on every occasion.
Ages 23 – 26: Driving the car with your girlfriend sitting next to you. This is the time where the enjoyment is not in the driving but in the fact that you have got a beautiful person sitting next to you. You feel as the luckiest and happiest person on this planet.
Ages 26 – 28: You buy your first car from your own money and it is the proudest moment for you at that point of time in life. You take your parents out in the new car and notice their pride. You take your girlfriend/fiancé out in your new car and love the beaming look on her face. This is the stage in life when you feel that life is perfect for you.
Ages 28 – 29: Driving the car with your wife next to you. This is a great period as you have got married recently and together as a couple you want to check out lot of new restaurants in town, watch all the good movies and make every weekend a great and enjoyable weekend.
Ages 29 - 30: Radio is your morning companion as your tread through traffic, all alone on a daily basis trying to reach to your place of work. This is the stage by when you have driven enough that you hate driving to office daily and you know that it is really not the drive that you hate but the pain of using clutch and brake after every two minutes in the crazy office hour traffic that really puts you off.
Ages 29 – 31: The car usually involves two couples: your best friend and his wife along with your wife and you. All of you feel that it is great fun to go out either for a weekend trip or for a nice dinner with a bunch of friends.
Ages 31 – 33: Once again you are behind the wheels with your wife seated next to you but this time she has got your kid on her lap on the front seat exactly the way you had once been in that seat during the ages of 1 – 4.
Ages 34 – 45: This is a stage when a person is doing really well in life especially with regards to his professional career. This is the time of moving back to the back seat and handing over the keys to a chauffeur who will ensure that you can utilise your time better while seated behind. In most cases, this time the car that you are sitting in is not the first car that you had bought.
From age 34 onwards, during the time that you are not heading to office, it is a repeat of all the ages mentioned above, but this time you are playing the role of a father and your kid is playing the role of you.
