We recently had an accident in our car. We were all fine, nothing major, but some lady thought she could squeeze past us on Flinders Lane in the city, with our big, fat arse four wheel drive, stopped at the traffic lights waiting for people to cross the road, so we could turn left! Yep, she failed! It was an accident, we all make mistakes, but it took my son and I, half an hour to stop shaking! The noise and the shaking of the car, did give us a bit of a fright!

While our car was being repaired, we were given a courtesy car by the panel beater. Thanks! A road worthy one would have been nice though! We couldn’t hear each other speak once the car reached 30 kms per hour, as the poor old thing let out the most ear- piercing squeal in protest, as I tried to floor the accelerator in an effort to reach the speed limit! It wasn’t the fact that it was old that bothered me, I’m not a princess, I’ll drive a truck if I have to, it was a car and I was thankful I had something to scoot around in, but it was the fact that it was dangerous and just not looked after that bothered me. I held my breath every time we hopped in it, hoping that by some stroke of luck, we would reach our destination in one piece. A funny thing happened though. When I drove that car, things changed. People changed. They were nice, they let me into various traffic situations, and they smiled! It was almost as though they felt sorry for me because my car proved to them that I was less fortunate than them. My normal car is nice, like lots of other nice cars on the road, but when I drive it, I find that heaps of people are horrible. They rarely let you into their lane, or give you the right of way, and actually look at you with contempt! They yell abuse, they tailgate, they glare. Really people? It’s not a Ferrari for goodness sakes! (Would be nice to drive one though!) I couldn’t believe it, I was the same person, I hadn’t changed, but the car was different. How funny is it, that some people seem to like you, as long as you don’t have something which they consider to be better than they have! I couldn’t care less about material possessions. We bought this car, second hand, because of the safety features and because it ticked all the boxes for my engineer husband! Trust me, there were lots of boxes to tick! It was the right fit for us. We didn’t buy it for any other reason.

My old car was a Ford station wagon, and I loved it. The amount of nappies that were changed in the back of that thing, and the number of sport clothes changes that went on in it, between activities, was impressive, to say the least! It was practical, ugly but practical! I didn’t care! But the one thing I did care about, was that it didn’t have protective airbags, so we got rid of it. Come to think of it, the same thing happened in that car, people were nicer! Sad! I pointed this out to my kids as a lesson. A lesson on how to treat people. I told them, (yep, I’m always blabbing on to them about something or other!), that it doesn’t matter how people present, what matters is who they are. You make your decision about a person, based on the actual person, not based on perceptions of who they might be, or based on the material possessions they might have. That’s just wrong and really, just not fair. If someone does well, be happy for them, don’t resent them for their hard work, but be inspired by them and what they have achieved. But, I pointed out to them, remember the most important thing. Success is not measured by material possessions, it is measured by the love you have for your family and the love they have for you, and by the state of happiness and peace you achieve in your life. When you have these things, you have it all, and only then do you know that you have made it. You can be completely happy with very little, now that’s something to aspire to.