Merge!

Confession: Driving scares the bejeebees out of me. It always has. Whoever popularized the idea of sitting in an enclosed box filled with highly flammable gasoline traveling at very fast speeds... with thousands of other people doing the same exact thing? Oh, right. Henry Ford. Good going.

Much to my dismay, I quickly learned that driving is a necessity. As much as I wish that I could just walk everywhere, that is not much of a way to get anything done. There is a reason why society has adopted a different route... literally.

I can remember one specific instance when my sister Amanda was first learning to drive. We lived in the (very) small town of Eads, Colorado, but we were in Pueblo for our oh-so-fun biannual dentist appointments. Amanda needed to get back onto the interstate. His heart racing at the thought of his teenage daughter driving in a much bigger city than she was accustomed, my dad yelled, "Amanda! Merge!" as she approached the end of the acceleration lane.

Think before you speak, Dad.

He meant "Yield."

Poor Amanda didn't quite know which choice to make. Thankfully, no accidents resulted.

Amanda's tendency to merge quickly is one that I see often on a figurative level, especially in college. Students are anxious to "play with the big leagues." They merge quickly onto the fancy new interstate of adult life... and most are lucky enough not to have an accident.

Recall what I said about being terrified about driving. Yeah, merging quickly is not my problem. Rather, I sit in the acceleration lane for too long, annoying the drivers behind me endlessly. My father's accidental instructions to Amanda should have been directed toward me, several years later.

And yes, this analogy does carry alllll the way through this little post. In my college experience, I have been afraid to merge. I have held onto my small-town life experiences at the end of the acceleration lane because I am afraid of an accident. I am afraid of hurting myself or others because of the choices I might make in haste.

The most ironic thing is that the only car accident I have ever been in was in the middle-of-nowhere Iowa. There was little traffic. I was in the passenger seat, but I was unconcerned for my safety. It was the kind of driving that I consider manageable and easy for anyone. I quickly changed my mind looking down confusedly at a windshield spread over my lap in a totaled car at the bottom of a ditch.

Accidents will likely happen, on the interstate or not. I will make mistakes in life. But seriously, it's time to merge.

As Meg Cabot so eloquently said in The Princess Diaries, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all."