In my country, when facing a very messy and confusing situation, we use the expression „What a Saigon!”. No idea how polish people learned so early about the situation on vietnamese roads for this expression to enter polish slung, but here we are. Only when I moved to Saigon, I could understand the true extend of this saying. To drive a motorbike in Saigon looks scary and frightening for those who, like me, are not used to drive. It seems so chaotic, disorganized. It is a miracle that there are so few accident compared to what one may expect. Paradoxically though, when I finally took courage to get on the motorbike and drive through the crowded street, I found it to be a source of many valuable lessons for my own life.

  1. Life is a chaos but it’s much better with no traffic lights.

I come from the culture where everything is well organized and established. We have bus timetables, we arrive always on-time (even better 10 minutes before), we have strict rules and we are proud to find millions of ways to legally break them. When we drive, we are very careful with road signs, speed limits, traffic lights etc. But in Vietnam, it doesn’t work like this. There is no bus timetable; the bus just arrives when it arrives and you need to be very focused to catch it because it won’t even stop on your bus stop if you don’t give a sign to the driver. A curious thing is that the crossroads where there are no traffic lights have less traffic than those with lights. With traffic lights, one have to wait for the light to change. In pick hours, it makes traffic jam extends for whole kilometres with cars and motors stuck with no possibility to move. And the Vietnamese people doesn’t like to be stuck. When no lights, everybody just finds his/her own way out. That’s the big advantage of travelling by moto: it is small and easy to manage, can fit in narrow streets and between cars. It’s much easier to keep moving this way. And when I come to think of that, life many times is this kind of chaos, sometimes there are so many traffic lights, so many rules that make us feel stuck. It is much more risky to move around with no guidance, no route, but… at least we keep moving. Sometimes it is better to turn off the red lights and keep pushing our way until the road ahead appears free of obstacles.

  • Mind your own business.

Living in community teaches us to take good care for one another, to be conscious about other people’s needs and try to do our best to make others’ life easier. We learn to be sisters, but sometimes, especially when being the person responsible for community, it feels like a burden of being responsible for everyone. When one sister has any kind of problem, is not responding to fraternal correction, does things that don’t exactly follow our congregational way of life etc., one feels she has responsibility to “repair” this sister. I feel it a lot: that I have to make others behave the way they should and if I don’t, it feels like a failure. But when I drive a motorbike in Saigon, I know that I can answer only for myself, for what I am doing in this moment. I have no control over the way other are driving, I cannot make them behave differently. I can be responsible only for myself. And maybe that’s the point: at the end, each one of us answer for ourselves. We are adults, we cannot blame other forever for our shortcomings, our ignorance, our bad decisions. To be responsible for oneself is more than enough responsibility for one person.

  • Look only few meters ahead

Sometimes I get anxious. When I think about what I still have to do, what lies ahead of me and my community, what kind of troubles we will encounter, I feel I cannot breathe. I notice that I look too far ahead. I imagine how my life will look like in 5 or 10 years, I consider my situation, my family, my community, my congregation, and all I want is to close myself in my room with curtains down and sleep for eternity. In a way, I transfer this mentality to the way I drive. When I see a big truck doing a complicated maneuver a kilometre ahead of me, I already use to brake preparing myself to what will happen when I will arrive there. And by this, I cause trouble in the place I am at the moment because everyone gets disturbed when someone abruptly stops with no evident reason. Driving help me to learn to be attentive to where I am now, to what is my position now, to what happens in my immediate surroundings. Never mind the truck ahead, we will manage when we get there. As of now, pay attention to what you have to do here and now. That’s the only think you can really control.

  • Trust but don’t trust others

It’s kind of complicated. As an inexperienced driver, I do trust in other people’s skills, that even if I make a mistake (better to say when I make a mistake) they will know how to react and there won’t be any tragedy. But on the other hand, some of those “others” drives really like crazy, as if they were the only ones using roads. It takes only a second while I look in the rear-view mirror and suddenly I have another motor crossing my way, turning around, stopping in front of me. One cannot lose focus at any moment. In some way, I am learning that to trust other is a complicated thing. On our life journey, we encounter those who make us fall, who give us trouble, and thanks to them we learn the rapid respond, we learn to be creative in solving problems that they bring to our lives. But we also encounter those who “have our back”, with whom we can do stupid things, take very bad decisions, commit thousand and one mistakes, yet still they will be there for us to catch us when we fall, to prevent our small world from falling apart. Both of them are equally necessary for us to grow and mature. That’s why growing is a complicated thing.

  • Don’t be too polite

When I was learning to drive a car in my country, I was taught to always be polite to other, to always cede the way to others, always stop when seeing pedestrian crossing even in a forbidden place. And I tried to do the same in Vietnam, only to receive a concert of horns and bad words from other drivers. People here are not used to drive politely. They don’t expect that somebody will do so, and it puts them off. I became an obstacle to the flow. So I am slowly learning to push through the traffic like everyone else does, somehow even pedestrians here know how to do it in spite of the river of motorbike flowing through the streets. I think I could say I am learning to keep my boundaries. It shows me that it is important to respect myself, to prioritize myself, my plans, my journey, my road. It means saying “no” to those who try to to interrupt it. It also means staying focused on my life’s purpose and not letting myself be swayed.

  • When I let it flow…

At the beginning I must admit I was terrified only thinking about getting on the motorbike and driving through the crowded streets of Saigon. But soon enough I discovered that the secret to driving lies in simply following the flow of the traffic. As long as you stay in line, go with steady speed, don’t bother others, you will surely arrive at your destination. Like a dead fish following the flow of the river. Sometimes it makes me wonder if this kind of security is the best for me. I mean, there are times when I got tired of fighting, of struggling to change the world, of trying hard to achieve something. It feels so good to belong to the flow, not to think, not to decide, not to question, not to be different. Just flow. But too much quietness makes one slumber, stop being aware of the beauty around, stop questioning the direction. We need to take courage to step out of the mainstream and do things in a different way, even when others will be bothered.

  • You’ve got this!

To be honest, I struggle with low self-esteem. I am not secure of myself, of my decisions. I am always second-guessing my choices. I’m on the side of those afraid to take risks. It took me few long months to decide to get on the motorbike, just to mention one example. Suddenly, after some weeks past and I didn’t die, I realize that I was really doing it. I’ve got this! Nobody has ever taught me to ride. Just the way nobody has ever taught me to be an animator, to live in Vietnam, to accompany young people in their vocational journey, and many other things. But I am doing it. I’ve got it. Because sometimes all we need is to take this one step, just to begin, and we can soon discover of what marvellous things we are really capable of.

Sr. Aleksandra Nawrocka CMT