Learning About Life Is Like Learning How to Drive a Car

How Modern Convenience Is Changing the Way We Learn and Experience Life

Vehicles have changed over the years, and many of these improvements have been for the better. But how far is too far?

Let’s go back in time a little and look at how the advent of the car has changed and simplified life in many ways. That’s how it was when I got my driver’s licence in 1995. There was a gearshift and no automatic transmission. The only luxury feature in the car I drove was power steering, which made driving easier.

The other day, as I sat on my youngest daughter’s bed, I started thinking about how life can be compared to different experiences. Since my oldest daughter is now learning to drive with me and my husband, it came naturally to compare life with the process of learning to drive.

The Evolution of Cars and Everyday Convenience

The more I thought about it, the clearer the insights, reflections, analogies, and comparisons became. In the old days, starting a car required more preparation and physical effort. Today, you don’t even always have to turn a key—you simply press a button. The parking brake is a button, too. Almost everything can be programmed.

You can unlock the doors remotely, open the trunk with your key, and even have the seat adjust automatically using a programmed key.

Cruise control is used because moving your foot up and down can apparently be tiring. How can that be such a physical effort? Besides, I often see people who don’t signal when they’re about to turn or change lanes. Even that little movement with their fingers seems to be too much. Right?

The irony is flowing, and I’m someone who loves irony. Life takes on a different lustre, and with humour, we can begin to see it in new ways.

What Learning to Drive Teaches Us About Life

Life should be more like when I learned to drive. It required dedication, focus, knowledge, logical thinking, paper maps, and much better local knowledge.

Today, all it takes is a written test—which will soon be obsolete as well. Age is probably the only thing that will remain in the end, but even that will likely be lowered, considering that the main requirement is simply that someone be in the car. You enter your destination, and the car takes you there without you needing to know anything about cars.

This makes me wonder what happens to the skills that once mattered. Learning to drive was about understanding what you were doing, paying attention to your surroundings, and knowing how to respond when something unexpected happened.

The Importance of Focus, Knowledge, and Responsibility

As a result, what I consider important in life and in driving—focus, commitment, logical thinking, full presence, local knowledge, critical thinking, and expertise—disappears.

Just getting into the car is, as is often the case in life, a matter of pressing a button, and everything simply rolls along. If something doesn’t feel right, there is always an app that can help you.

Taking this a step further, are those who don’t want to learn to drive afraid of the responsibility? But honestly, there isn’t much responsibility left to take on when we’re deprived of so much of what life is all about.

Learning, living life to the fullest, actively participating, retaining knowledge, and bringing your ideas to life are all important parts of our experience. We need to make sure our minds and bodies do what they are meant to do: be used to their fullest potential.

Everyday Convenience and the Way We Think

It’s certainly amazing to compare different phenomena in life and see parallels that make us rethink, reconsider, and reflect on what we’re doing. Today, many people seem afraid to wake up and examine what they’re doing with their lives.

Just now, I also found myself thinking about the TV remote control. When I was a child, there were only two channels and no remote control. I had to get up and walk over to the television to change the channel or turn the volume up or down.

Those small everyday actions required us to move, think, and engage with our surroundings. Today, many of them have disappeared because convenience has made everything easier.

Reclaiming the Power to Learn

These everyday moments of moving around and thinking things through—rather than simply making everything easy—are important opportunities to keep our minds active and nurture our brain cells.

We need to reclaim the power to truly engage with life and to learn. Through learning, we live.

Life comes alive on a whole new level, and that is the greatest gift we’ve been given—and one we need to preserve.