At some point in my life I was not well. I kept less in touch with my friends, I had difficulty studying, I was getting out of bed later and later in the day and stopped cooking. I quit going out. I did not feel anything, except an endless boredom and a lowkey anxiety that made me chew my nails – even more than usual – and disturbed my sleep. It was a vicious cycle that started with the extreme monotony that I experienced in my everyday life. Fortunately, some people helped me break out of it.
I was reminded of that time yesterday, when I was carpooling on my way to Aix-en-Provence for New Year’s Eve. The guy who I was sharing the car with was working with a famous oil company to plant trees in the Republic of Congo in order to offset carbon emissions. We had an exciting discussion about the ethical implications of such an endeavour – like how to work with the farmers who previously cultivated the land where the trees would be planted. My car-sharing partner only came in France for the holidays, and planned to go back to Congo in the beginning of January. Talking with him allowed me to open a window on another way of life and form a connection with someone, fleeting as it may be. It was awesome.
If I had such a thrilling experience, why was I reminded of a miserable time ? It is because I thought that when I was down, I would have needed car-sharing as a way to break the monotony and open my mind to others. Carpool or hitchhiking is a fantastic way to meet people you would never had had the opportunity to talk with in other circumstances, even less spend hours in the same enclosed space. According to a study commissioned by Blablacar, 1 on 5 people even admit to having revealed something about themselves while carpooling which they had never told anyone before. Together in an enclosed space for hours and hours on end, you are forced to consider the other person as a temporary friend. But what about those not good at making friends ? If you have difficulties opening up to people or striking up conversations with strangers, you might feel that being confined in a car with an unknown person for the entire duration of your journey would be like your own personal hell.
It is however in that case that car sharing might benefit you. In the time that I was not feeling particularly good with myself, the last thing I wanted was to make efforts to make friends with a stranger, especially one that I would never see again after a few hours. But it was precisely those few hours relatively free of judgment, with a discussion partner that is the key to some part of the world completely different from my life, that I needed. It is “relatively” free of judgment because the other person has no other choice but to open his or her mind and confront his or her opinions to the vision of the person sitting next to him in the car. According to the same study done by Blablacar, 51% of the people who used the app changed their opinion on a topic after having talked with their travel companion.
In my case, I would have found someone who would have to lend a ear to my plights and even give me advice based on his or her life experiences. That isn’t to say that he or she would have found the ordeal to be a horrible one ; as I experienced it, people are generally curious about what someone else has to say. They might even feel better about themselves, thinking that in the end they do not have it so bad in life. I felt lucky indeed, listening to the day-to-day life in Congo of my travelling companion, who seemed to not have anything else to do but work – interesting as it may be to him – and drink on week-ends.
My journey for New Year’s Eve was not the first time that I carpooled with someone else. I spent a few days travelling in South Korea only by hitchhiking in October ; and it was cathartic. Not speaking Korean made experiencing a eye-opening conversation difficult. You might even think that the entire rides – if I managed to get them – were spent in an uncomfortable silence, made almost tangible by its unpleasantness. I am not going to lie to you : those kinds of silence happened. But they made the sense of accomplishment we got when managing to communicate something via hand gestures or phone translations even more precious. I remember being intensely focused on my interlocutor in the hope of understanding something, and the pure satisfaction that went through me when I did. Because of the language barrier between us, everything else but the communication via speech was magnified : his gestures, his smiles, his kindness when talking via the translator on his phone about the autumn leaves of a certain park I absolutely had to visit or the dangerous parts of a new city. It is impossible to be unhappy in those moments ; life is too intense.
Of course, if you do not live in a foreign country, your day-to-day life is probably spent with people speaking the same language, as do the people you will carpool with. But even without the language barrier, you will find the same kind of contentment when finishing up an argument that has to stay polite for the sake of your safety on the road. And the curious thing is, you do not feel sad when the journey ends ; only the same tranquil satisfaction of a time well spent. In the end, the only difficulty is finding when your next shared journey will be. But there is always family to visit, friends to go bother, or even just week-ends you can spend in solitude someplace else, where you can get a breath of fresh air. There is no key to happiness, but one can see their problems shrink when sharing them with someone who, paradoxically, is not a friend. A sense of tranquillity can emerge even from a discussion with someone who seems diametrically opposed to you ; energy can replace what boredom had taken away before. Carpool is no miracle, but it is a good way of breaking the monotony cycle that otherwise can break you ; and finding good albeit temporary friends along the way.
Lisa Zareff 