Following Distance

You know what following distance is – the distance you keep between your car and the car in front of you (i.e., the car you’re following).

The phrase came to my mind one day as I was driving home after a not-particularly-stressful day at the office. The drive, though, was very stressful.

Besides a car coming up way too fast on my right to then cut me off as the right (merge) lane ended, there was a car from my left crossing three lanes to get into an exit lane. And we won’t mention the oh-so-RUDE drive who sped up to pass me just as I signaled I wanted to change into his lane (to avoid the merge-cutter-offer above).

Despite those less-than-considerate drivers, I still maintained a reasonably safe following distance.

Or, more accurately, I tried to. Because that car from the right and car from the left I mentioned? They both crammed themselves into that space between me and the car in front of me.

And that made me think about life in general, and how the spaces we leave between activities (a different kind of following distance, if you will) get filled up by other people. Fortunately, most of the time, the other people who take over our following distance aren’t as rude as the drivers I called out earlier. No, most of the time, those people are people we genuinely like, even love – or they’re people we want to spend time with to figure out if we could like or love them.

That doesn’t mean they don’t crowd us.

What do you do when someone crowds your following distance? Well, in a car, you ease off the accelerator just a little bit and let that space return to what it should be.

In life, you have to block out a time and say, “This time is special – it’s time for me to regroup from the hectic day(s) (week(s), month(s)…) we’ve had lately and say a firm no to anyone else who tries to crowd it.”

Easier said than done, most times, but necessary nonetheless.