Have you ever given any thought to how much we rely on automobiles in our everyday lives? Almost every modern society has various forms of transportation to move people from one place to the next every single hour of every day in the year.

            People who own their own vehicles probably do not give any thought to how they are going to move around each day because they have an automobile that they can sit in and drive from place to place.

            On the other hand, individuals who do not own a vehicle or have access to a vehicle will make choices based on this fact. Perhaps the job they have or the school they would send their children to would depend on whether or not public transportation could get them to their destination.

            But for the person who owns a vehicle and therefore relies on that piece of machinery to keep them mobile, it can be very disconcerting to know that unless they are well versed in the maintenance of that vehicle they must rely on someone else to ensure that they can have an automobile that functions properly at all times.

            The same way we entrust our bodies to physicians we must hand over our vehicles to the mechanic. For those who own their own mode of transportation, the verdict is still out on whether or not that is a blessing or a curse. When the time comes for that routine service job, because it is thought of as routine, we don’t give a second thought to what will be done to our vehicle.

            In fact I had never really given any thought to this until this week. What I thought was going to be a regular service turned into six days of intense frustration and anger. I took my car in for a scheduled service only to have it cut off less than five minute after I pulled away from the local car dealer’s service department.

If I had not been a loyal customer with this company since 1991 I would probably not have felt so angry and disappointed. But I guess I was the fool to think that a 16 year relationship would have meant something.

When the editor of this local daily wrote about his experience with a car dealership in Nassau I don’t think I really empathized with him. I think I may have been a bit smug thinking the company that services my car would never treat me so badly.

Well, my experience last week has taught me otherwise. I now realize that each time we leave our automobiles at a car dealership we have no guarantees that the vehicle will return to us in full working order. In my case, it was returned worse than when it went into the service garage.

            The ironic thing about this whole situation is that everyday we are required to trust people whom we do not know. We must trust the pilot who flies the airplane.   We must trust the teacher who instructs our child each day. We must trust the surgeon who operates on our bodies. We must trust the bus driver because we do not own a car.

            How have we programmed ourselves to relinquish such control? Perhaps so many of us do not even think about it so we do not recognize the amount of trust we put into these individuals. So when you think about it, we place a huge amount of trust into the hands of the mechanic every time we turn our car keys over to him.

            We trust that when he gives us back the keys to our vehicle that we won’t cut off in the middle to traffic. We trust that once he tells us he has fully serviced our vehicle our brakes won’t squeak and groan every time we apply pressure. In fact, we trust that once we sit behind the wheel of that automobile it will be business as usual – a drive in the park.

            This week I challenge you to think long and hard about who you trust with your life and the lives of your children. While you are not to live your life in fear, you must be aware that surrendering your body or your vehicle to someone else is always risky business.