Backseat Driver

Isn't life from the backseat great?

Think about it. No stress from making split second decision. No tiredness from having to constantly look for risk and possible danger. No pressure to have to keep going no matter what.

To the backseat driver err passenger, everything is great. If the trip went well it's because the road is favorable. If something happened "Man I wouldn't have done *that*!". If you got bored you just napped away.

Take Cinderella for example, or other fairy tale. Some people said it was dumb to expect a prince to save you. But the tales were written in an era where women are objects, and marriage is the only way to climb up and save both yourself and your future child(ren).

Vintage ads where women look so happy when gifted household appliances were met with "Down with patriarchy!" and "Stupid shallow b*tches!!" But that was an era where for women, their house is their castle. It's probably the equivalent of strutting to brunch with your Birkin bag. And since men are the one who has to work to pay for it, who controls whom?

Slavery. Supremacy. Human rights. Health knowledge. Technology. We've come from fucked up cough syrup to mandatory clinical tested drugs. From the belief that women's distress is because their womb is constantly travelling/moving about to artificial insemination.

But when you are a backseat driver, all you see is the "should've". You see things from a comfortable point of view, instead of experiencing it yourself. You can easily call someone in the past as "not doing good enough", but can you do it if you were ever in the driver's seat and facing the challenges as it evolve?

Past is important. Not to be mocked and chastised, but to see how far we've become. To fully appreciate the strength of those who fight against the current condition. To understand what we need to do to move further ahead.

As always, you can't go far without empathy. Only by understanding the driver's action can we be ready for the challenges that may arise when we took the wheel ourselves. Only by carefully observing the overall road condition can we understand the whys and the hows. To do all of this, we need to have empathy. To feel how they feel instead of seeing it from our high horse.

The time will come when the current driver is no more. The time will come when we ought to take the wheel. Guess what? When that time comes we will have our backseat driver on our own. Where our actions be considered outdated or even wrong. That's how life is.

Drive on, pretty boy (and girl). Drive on.