The Value in Being a Passenger

In a recent meditation on the Calm app, meditation teacher Jeff Warren spoke about finding joy in being a passenger:

I don’t have to make any decisions right now. I can just go along for the ride and trust that I’m being taken where I need to go.

His message resonated — perhaps because I happened to be listening to it while I was on a train.

It mirrored my experience of the moment: without the responsibility of paying attention to the road, I could allow my mind to wander as the scenery passed me by.

The idea that we can find joy in being a passenger runs counter to our cultural conditioning.

Drivers Wanted

In its iconic ad campaign, Volkswagon asked:

On the road of life, are you a passenger or a driver?

The tagline: Drivers wanted.

Nobody makes a car commercial advertising passenger experience. Cars are marketed to drivers.

That messaging shaped our culture beyond the auto industry.

The idea of being a passenger on the “road of life” clashes with the relentless push to take control of our destiny, to be the boss babe, to be proactive, to take action.

We live in a culture of drivers—including back-seat drivers.

We crave control.

But being in control all the time entails a constant stream of decisions, and we often underestimate the toll this takes on our energy and mental bandwidth.

Our Days Are Filled With Micro-Decisions

Let’s put aside the big life decisions for a moment — and even the smaller daily choices — such as what to wear, what to eat, whether to workout, that we often try to minimize through habits and rituals.

The biggest drain actually comes from fleeting micro-decisions.

For example, even when you have a clear destination, the act of driving itself entails an endless series of tiny decisions:

Which route to take. When to switch lanes. Whether to stop for gas now or tomorrow. Whether to stop and do that errand that’s on your way. Even how hard to press the gas pedal.

Walking through the city presents a similar situation:

Each time you are forced to stop for a red light, there’s a choice: wait for the light to switch and continue on this path, or cross the street with the light to keep moving, which will force you to take a different route?

Do you slow down when you’re caught behind a slower person or walk around them? As you walk toward another pedestrian, you engage in a silent, implicit negotiation: who is going to alter course to avoid a collision, and which way will you go?

Even when you’re walking with someone, there’s an implicit agreement about who is making those decisions.

These fleeting, seemingly insignificant decisions are so common that we hardly notice them and we often don’t realize how much the cumulative effect drains our energy.

If you’ve ever come home at the end of the day exhausted without explanation, consider how many of these micro decisions you made during the course of your day.

The Freedom of Being a Passenger

It’s no wonder then that, despite our obsession with driving, we’re eager to embrace driverless cars.

That we’re willing to let a machine take the wheel speaks volumes about how exhausting it is to make decisions all the time.

Secretly, we yearn to relinquish control of something.

And this is the magic of the train.

There’s a freedom of being a passenger, in letting someone else handle the details. Relinquishing control allows my mind to rest and recharge, and frees up bandwidth for addressing more consequential matters.

Nobody is saying that you have to live your whole life from the passenger’s seat.

But I’ve found that learning how to embrace the role of passenger makes me a better driver.