This I Believe

You’re driving down a country road and it’s about mid-night. There isn’t another car in site. You have the radio playing your favorite song and your feeling pretty good. You glance over a little to your left. You see the other lane for the opposite traffic. It’s all alone, no one to ride it. You ask yourself, what would happen if I drove over there? “I better not, what if a cop is watching, or what if another car comes out of now where and hits me head on” you think to yourself. Your hands drift to the left a little bit and the car is half way into the left lane. You immediately correct yourself and put the car back into the right lane. You do it again, this time the car is almost all the way in the other lane. Again, you correct yourself. You just want to know what it’s like driving in the other lane. I believe you should drive in the opposite lane.
Ever since I was a little kid, I would get pressured into doing stuff I didn’t want to do. Parents, friends, and teachers would tell me how fun it was, how everyone else was doing it, how it would help my future. “It” is the word for the list of stuff I dreaded doing while growing up to try and please other people. Baseball, piano lessons, Jazz band, Track, Cross Country, Basketball, classes I didn’t want to take, etc. I would have to do all this stuff and rarely ever do anything I actually wanted. I say do what you want. Don’t let other people tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. Now I’m not saying to go out and start driving in the other lane of traffic, but do what you want and not what other people want, even if it does get the same reaction out of people as driving in the opposite lane.
Driving in the other lane also brings up another topic, risk. People always make the word “risk” sound so bad, but how are we supposed to live our lives without it. Risk is how our ancestors made it over here hundreds of years ago. They risked everything they had to come here for a better life. Risk is how we made it to the moon in 1969. How are we supposed to live a fulfilled life if we don’t take a few risks every now and again? If you don’t take risks, you might as well be some 10 year olds pet hamster sitting in a cage all day with nothing to do, but at least you’ll be safe.
I like to skateboard for fun and people are constantly pulling over to tell my friends and me how unsafe and irresponsible we’re being. Cops pull us over on our skateboards and tell us not to ride at night and threaten to give us tickets and take away our boards. We just tell them we won’t do it again and go out the next night, because we know how big of a risk we’re taking. I think that some people need to take at least some small risks or there lives might get dull after a while, I know I do. Skateboarding is the thing I do to get my daily dose of risk and adrenalin everyday. Without it, I feel like that pet hamster stuck in a cage all day.
Driving in the opposite lane is a metaphor for two things. Doing what you want even if that raises eyebrows from other people. It also stands for risk taking and how it’s not always a bad thing. I believe that everyone needs to take risks to get what they want out of life, or you’ll regret it when you don’t have the chance anymore. You may never regret not driving in the opposite lane of traffic, but maybe there’s something else you’ll regret if only you had taken the risk.