Slowing down to the Speed of Fog

It was dark and foggy this morning. Visibility was limited. As I was driving down the highway at a sedate 100 km/h, I was amazed to see several vehicles pass me. How could they drive so quickly in the fog? After they had passed and were out of sight, I tried my high beam headlights. They actually made things worse. I had a nice view of all of the fog in front of me instead of the road. I turned the high beams off.

There is a driving tip that says you shouldn't overdrive your headlights. You overdrive your headlights when you go so fast that your stopping distance is farther than you can see with your headlights. So, if your headlights illuminate the road 100 feet in front of you, but you're driving so fast that you would need 150 feet to stop the car, you are overdriving your headlights.

Obviously, when it is dark AND foggy out, your headlights do not illuminate as far in front of you, which means that we should be driving slower. Which we obviously don't do... we tend to forget that the posted speed limit is the Maximum... and is posted for ideal driving conditions. When conditions are less than ideal, we should slow down.

Which made me realize that driving in fog is a metaphor for life. Sometimes our lives are clear. We know where we are going. We know how to get there. And we move full speed ahead. Whether it is in relationships, career or leisure. We can see clearly and we move fast. But there come times when things aren't so clear. We're not sure what to do about relationships... or career... or leisure... or home ownership. Our tendency can be to keep moving at the same fast clip to which we have become accustomed. We make mistakes. We get into relationships or jobs that are not ideal. We regret our decisions and have to backtrack. We overdrove our headlights.

Perhaps when our life is foggy, and things are not clear, instead of trying to move quickly, we should simply slow down and move at the pace of life. Rather than trying to speed through the foggy sections of life... we should slow down and stay within the range of our headlights. That might not be very far... and we might have to slow down quite a bit, but in the end, we'll end up choosing our path rather than rushing headlong into situations that we later regret.