Driving on Indian city roads is no small feat! You can expect anything—from an abruptly stopped vehicle to motorists driving against the flow of traffic. Even the shoulder of the road often becomes just another lane!
I was feeling quite proud of the fact that our car had remained scratch-free for six months, especially considering the chaos of city driving. But that streak ended yesterday. As I navigated between a motorcyclist on the wrong side of the road and a van that had stopped abruptly, with a protruding metal bumper, I misjudged the space. The bumper gave the side of my car a good rub, leaving a noticeable dent.
I felt terrible about it and was determined to spend money to fix the dent. I even thought about addressing the other minor marks, which were barely noticeable and had been there since we bought the car.
But then, my daughter questioned my fixation. She suggested that we could drive the car as it is and save the money for when we really needed it. When I kept offering my reasons, she simply said it was great that our car now had battle scars. I initially disagreed, insisting that it wasn’t a battle but a simple error on my part. She then pointed to the small temporary scars on her legs from learning to ride a bike and proudly referred to them as her own battle scars.
In that moment, I recognized how proud she was of her learning process and how she never complained about any of her experiences while riding. It made me reflect on my own fixation with keeping the car perfect, versus her ease in accepting and even embracing the marks of her journey.
As the day ended, I remembered Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, *A Psalm of Life*:
**In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life...**
Modern life might not be a literal battlefield where we risk our bodies, but it is a constant battle within ourselves—between our fixations and our ability to accept imperfections.
I thanked my daughter for her wisdom and had a good night’s rest, feeling a little more at peace with our car’s new "battle scars."
**Photo Credits:** Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels
Comments