Life in the 2nd gear!

Up-hill!

Slow and unhurried, life in the 2^nd gear is best described by the word, “despacito” (people understand more easily, courtesy Luis Fonsi), Spanish for slowly. This writing came out of my first hill driving experience, a drive with my beautiful best-half, Shalom to Morni hills, an hour drive into the hills from Panchkula in Haryana.

The hills are where you realize the 4^th or the 5^th gear are not gonna take you anywhere.

Hills are where cruise control doesn’t work.

Hills can’t afford slacking off, demand alertness and dexterity and hard-work not to forget the motion-sickness for the sensitive. The constant paranoia of a land-slide on seeing huge rocks and the fear of going off the road into the valley is unsettling, adding to the misery. Life on the hill terrain is a constant pendulum change of gears from 1^st-2^nd to 3^rd and never beyond that. The feet engage in tap dancing with the accelerator, clutch and the brake (unless you’re driving on hill assist on an automatic transmission vehicle).

Contrast it with a 4/6 lane highway drive, life is cruising  at speeds faster than the fastest cheetah all the while allowing luxuries of popping a pop-corn, taking a blink-small nap, tapping or grooving into the latest single or even stealing a kiss if you’re flanked by somebody as beautiful as my best-half! Cruise control is the ultimate luxury on a high speed highway. Life is easy, life is fast and life is good.

But this is for all who’ve experienced the hilly terrain and for those who drive geared vehicle or at least have driven one, life on the hilly territory is hard-work offering little or no opportunity for the drive to admire or appreciate the beautiful landscape. But there’s good-news for all of us on the upward journey, beautiful, breathtaking sights await us at the top and it’s just a matter of time and distance. The top-of-the-world view and the feeling make us forget the arduous and nauseous journey (if at all it was one in the first place). Not to forget the down-hill drive this doesn’t require accelerator, thank God for gravity!

At times the 2^nd gear gives us the power and the control which the 5^th gear can’t offer. Enjoy the way on the way, all through the way. Remember He is sovereign period.

Ain’t no mountain high, no valley too low, when you’ve the grace and the favor of the Lord and a beautiful company beside you!  

Wanna join me for the next hill drive?

Wait, gotta ask my wife!

Joyance Shalom James