APRIL 13, 2013: HOW TO UNCOMPLICATE YOUR LIFE-BUY AN OLD CAR AND ENJOY THE RIDE

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The pace of life gets faster with every new device that connects us to the world at cyber-speed.

 

We can find out the temperature in Helsinki Finland or the most popular restaurants in Toledo, Ohio in the blink of an eye because we have the technology literally at our fingertips.

 

We have become ultra-dependent upon a cyber-space world that spoon-feeds us an indigestible gruel of non-experience that has no real nutritional value for our emotional or mental well-being.

 

We are content to watch the world through a laptop and cringe at the thought of real world experiences that were common-place just a few short years ago in our lives.

 

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Sure we have a new generation that will never have their umbilical cords cut loose from a new world of cell phones and I-pads because it is the only world they have ever known in their short lives. Take away the e-communication devices and you sever the jugular of their raison d’etre (“reason for existence” in Anglo terms). It would kill them in an emotional sense and possibly even in a literal sense.

 

But there is hope for the rest of us who lived in a past cyber-free world where our only contact with computers was through ‘Star Trek’ on TV when Kirk was forced to terminate evil computer banks with extreme prejudice in more than a few episodes.

 

Star Trek‘ also showed a dark side to the future when Kirk had big trouble driving stick in a pre-war drop top. An interplanetary star ship captain could not drive a standard transmission car and that is definitely not a rosy picture of the future.

 

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Many of us from a bygone era can remember a time when people travelled down real highways in cars and loved the experience. The beauty is that we can re-create that bygone era when the car was king anytime we want- if we have the will.

 

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Vintage sedans are still available to us if we want to find a road back to that time and place in our lives when things were considerably simpler and the world moved by at highway speeds in real cars-not cyber speeds in fake internet worlds.

 

They may come with four doors and roll-down windows and some may even have FM radios if they were built in the latter part of the 20th Century. But none of them will have GPS, XM, ABS, traction control, video screens, or any component that relies heavily on computer technology that is better than the gear that got us to the moon.

 

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We will be better people for the experience of an old-school drive in a car because we will once again have to talk amongst ourselves and not simply check our messages while text-communicating with people who are not in the car.

 

We will have another golden opportunity to soak up the real world around us as we travel down the road in an old car and that is a far cry from the cyber-world not really around us in the rest of our lives.

 

We can listen to the sounds of the road better in an old car because the engine and wind noise will be a familiar fact of life again. Today’s cars are well-engineered fortresses of solitude that have disconnected us from the driving experience because we have been assisted and coddled into a pampered world where the journey is too comfortable and easy.

 

We need to fight the giant arm-strong steering wheel and manage the Flintstonian drum brake system in traffic just to feel re-connected to the road and maybe even to feel alive again on the road.

 

We need to connect again with real world experiences and there is no better way than behind the wheel of an old car.

 

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Do it before it is too late and you will thank yourself for the decision.

 

Jim Sutherland

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