Do you know how driver’s licences work in Western countries?
To begin with, it takes about a year of training, in the classroom and on the road. Then come the theoretical and practical tests. In Canada, when you pass them, you hold a learner’s licence for a year before obtaining a probationary driver’s licence. Note that while you hold a learner’s licence, you are under two fundamental restrictions: always drive accompanied by someone who already holds a regular licence and do not drive between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. After all of that, you have a probationary licence and then a final regular licence.
Where this becomes even more important is that, once you hold the final licence, you lose points every time you commit certain driving errors. When you reach a certain number of lost points, the licence is simply taken away from you.
Today’s revelation is that human relationships are built on exactly the same principle. That is what we are going to demonstrate in this article.
When you make a brand-new acquaintance whom you believe in and who has potential, you spend a certain amount of time around that person. You tell them what you like and what you do not. You let them understand how to treat you. It is rather as though you were handing them the user’s manual so that the person knows how to behave towards you. That is the training.
When the person seems to have understood what your basic principles, your values and the things you hold dear are, you then begin to put situations to them and to see whether they come through or not. You notice what, in their reactions, sits well with you, and whether they make the decisions that, in your view, ought to be made. You see whether their behaviour "matches" yours. You mark them according to your own scale and you determine whether they pass or not. That is the phase of the theoretical and practical tests.
When the person passes these tests, you begin to open up further. You might require of the person to see who they keep company with. Is their circle of friends "decent"? Are the immediate members of their family people worth associating with? In the same vein, you might, as an added precaution, make sure not to see this person between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. This is the part of the film where, every time you are with the young lady, she insists that you drop her off at home before 11 p.m. or that your outings not run too late into the night. At this stage, during the day, you have all the privileges of a partner. But there are still a few restrictions. Congratulations, you hold the learner’s licence.
This stage, too, lasts a while. When you meet all the conditions at this level favourably, you move up to a higher stage. You come to meet your partner at any hour of the day or night. You have all the privileges of a partner. You enjoy the full menu: activities and outings no longer have express limits, conversations run deeper, you might speak of the future, make plans, picture yourselves in a more or less distant future. There, you hold the probationary licence and then the final regular licence after a certain time.
Many people think that this is the crowning achievement. They judge, wrongly, that the journey is complete and that they may lay down their arms.
However, just as with the regular driver’s licence, it is once you have it that you must be doubly careful: you have to know how to husband your points.
We shall speak of that in the second part of this article.
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