The Zen of Driving through life — the way of the rebel

Several years ago, my parents traveled and left 2 of our cars back home. They also some money (about 10k) for I and my sister to use for feeding during the 3 day period, big mistake.

I connived with my sister, we spared 3k out of the 10k for feeding then we fueled one of the cars with the remaining 7k, full tank.

Problem 1 solved, milestone reached.

Problem 2 was finding who was going to teach me how to drive. So I picked up my phone and called my cousin from across the fence. He was like “You want me to teach you how to drive? Damn it, Let’s do it already!”.

I have always been a rebel, from his response, he too was.

Within 5 minutes I and my cousin were already in the football field a stone throw away, driving round the field taking notes.

That day, I got more than a driving training, I got a training on how to drive through life. It was a zen moment. Dude has the aura of the chi and astral chakra shi all through his speech.

Things I learnt that day:

1. Once you’ve made up your mind to overtake, go ahead and complete it, no indecisiveness.

He taught me to make sure all the conditions were right for an overtake before staging one. But once I’ve kicked off the process, I should go ahead and complete it. Basically, if you have decided to go get something, go get it, don’t pause in between to worry about how the weather of the day is going to affect the user registration system of your grand parent’s cooking pot.

Its even recorded that Jesus said
“ no one who places his hand on the plow and looks back is worthy”.

2. Don’t do narrow escapes.

Very important, always give room for errors and surprise turn of events. Great life lesson, always finish the project well before the deadline to avoid stories that touch.

3. Don’t accelerate or decelerate too quickly.

Growth is good but it can kill if you allow your project to grow more than your capacity. Growing or pivoting too quickly can drown any business.

4. Don’t surprise other road users.

Don’t make decisions that surprise your team.

Google once discovered that their best project managers that came up with the best results are the ones that their respective team members find predictable. No surprise meetings, no surprise pivots, no surprise feature inclusions.

Basically, don’t snitch on your team or do something that will result to a snitch on the other team. Predictability is key.

Google basically discovered that humans work best when they have a sense of direction. This is an ancient truth.

This is important, especially for programmers, project managers that show up with this feature today and change their mind to another feature tomorrow essentially stagnates the project and throws everyone into a quagmire, not good.

There are many life lessons I learnt that day from grand-master sifo, cousin of life. We were done within 20 mins. I am a very fast learner, I just need to see you do it once or just talk about how to do it.

I dropped him off, great guy. Then I drove the car home, then I immediately bundled my entire desktop computer set into the vehicle, buckled my seat belt and drove to town to fix it!

No driver’s license, no papers, under aged but made it past 4 police checkpoint on my way. I was very confident in the driver’s seat that the drivers look at me and wave me to keep going.

My computer had broken down earlier, and I can’t live a day without writing codes. That desktop computer was the only thing I had in my world. I’ll do anything for my computer.

Some people write codes to put food on their table, some write to pass exams, some write to learn how to write.

As for me, I don’t write for any of those reasons, but I sure can’t live a day without it.

Most likely I’ll die with my finger on the keyboard.

All hell broke loose when my parents returned to discover what had happened in their absence and without their permission. Mum descended on my sis for conniving with me and Dad came for my throat :)

No gain saying, the only option that was left after the ensuing chaos was to ban me from driving and send me to a proper driving school soon as I hit age 18.

Acknowledgement:

Much respect to my kid sister, my awesome cousin, my parents and everyone else who has spent a day in the life of a rebel like me.

Keep the resistance on . :)