I remember a car enthusiast saying to me that given how badly people drive it is amazing how few accidents their really are on British roads. Drivers are always compensating for other drivers mistakes. Which is a skill since none of us choose who the drivers around us are or what medication they are on or where they are going. My driving instructor told me to remember that everyone else on the road is an idiot – since he probably told that to all his students it didn’t reflect well on me.
In much the same way none of us choose our generation or the place into which we re born be it town or country. None of us choose who our parents are or what problems they will face during our childhoods. In many ways we now know none of choose some of our own characteristics which emerge in our brains during vital years of early development.
Yet we are all careering around the planet making up for each other’s deficiencies, and somehow making do with what we have and it is amazing when you think of the million, million accidents and chances that go to create a life – that every one of your ancestors survived and bred – that there are not many more accidents than there actually are. That we put up with so many hardships and antagonisms so we can stay on the road of life.
The art of living, it would seem, is knowing where the idiots are.