Driving On a Doughnut

Author: Matthew Shelton

Driving Back into Atlanta today, I85 Northbound, I see this green minivan in front of me and across the back window, in quotes, it says “God Bless You”. I’m thinking that that is really nice, but when I pass them, I see something really bad – they’re driving on a doughnut.

driving on a doughnut - Matthew Shelton

A “doughnut” is a temporary tire – they are much smaller than a regular tire, and what they are meant for is to be something you can ride on after you’ve gotten a flat on your regular tire so that you can get to a repair place and get your tire fixed. They’re not meant to be driven on for more than a few miles, but here’s somebody on a high speed freeway that is seven lanes wide on each side, driving on this doughnut and they’re over two lanes away from the fastest lane that there is, on the far left, so obviously they aren’t getting off the freeway anytime soon.

So in terms of driving safety, this is risky behavior, isn’t it? How many miles can you go on a doughnut, anyway?

I think Homer Simpson would know 🙂driving-on-a-doughnut-Matthew-Shelton

But most of us are driving on a doughnut in at least one or two areas of our lives all the time, aren’t we? We may be literally be driving on a doughnut in terms of what tire we are using, or driving on a doughnut in terms of the breakfast we had that morning in that it was really poor nutrition and not designed to give us energy throughout the day, or we might be “driving on a doughnut” with our planning for the day, in that we are reacting to emails and sales letters instead of going forward with a preplanned and forward-looking agenda of what we know we should be doing:

Those are all examples of “driving on a doughnut” in different ways.

I’m not trying to be judgmental here, each one of these things could just be our growing edges and be the things we need to be working on the most, but we’ve got to watch out for driving on a doughnut on a regular basis, because that doughnut is going to have a flat, and once you have a flat with your doughnut on, then you don’t have anything left.

Plus having a flat with a real doughnut, with it’s extremely small rim, your vehicle loses control very quickly and can cause quite a dangerous wreck.

So don’t let me see you driving on a doughnut literally, and lets’ all be looking at and working on the doughnuts that we are driving on figuratively, every day. I certainly need to be working on eliminating the doughnuts from my life!

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