Whoever invented car indicators is a communications genius. Think about it. You’re locked in an enclosed metal box, with no way to tell the other boxed up individuals what you’re doing or where you’re going. Without those little orange lights, there’d be chaos. Complete and utter chaos. Your choice would be to drive straight ahead at all times, or risk serious injury as all the other metal boxes collided with yours.
Of course not all cars have indicators. For some cars they appear to be optional extras, and their idiot owners forgot to tick the box during the order process. Like the malaka (swearing in Greek isn’t really swearing) that almost caused my demise this morning because he was in the wrong lane (not a crime), wanted to be in my lane (not a drama), and proceeded to swerve into it without so much as a glance in his mirror, or a flick of the stick on his steering wheel (a blatant disregard for the highway code, and for that time of the morning, definitely a drama).
Indicators help us to be clear about our intentions. Using them means there’s no ambiguity about what we want to do. If only we had such clarity when we leave our metal boxes! I was eavesdropping on a conversation earlier, between two male students, who were having clarity problems with their girlfriends. In one case, ex-girlfriend. All because there was some ambiguity about whether their relationships were exclusive or not. One seems to have made the mistake of asking if they were exclusive, which appears to have resulted in a break-up; the other was forced into the discussing it with his still-girlfriend, suggesting that he erred on the side of caution and agree that they were, obviously, in an exclusive relationship. Given the pains he apparently took to avoid the conversation, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusion about his honesty…
Being honest about what we want from a relationship, or about what we want others to do, can feel uncomfortable. But if we want to avoid disappointment and regret, the only thing to do is be as clear as those little orange lights on your metal box. Unless of course you’re the idiot who forgot to tick the box…