Anyone watching Formula One live from Bahrain this past weekend will have been horrified to see Romain Grosjean’s Haas car plough into the barriers at over 100mph before ripping in two and bursting into flames. When I then saw Romain climb unassisted out of the broken, overturned car, which was still wedged in the barrier, and emerge from the inferno like some kind of fireproof super hero I was incredulous and relieved in equal measure. A device that was only introduced to the cars in 2018 is credited with saving his life.
The halo is a curved titanium bar that protects the driver’s head in the open-wheel cars of Formula One. When Romain Grosjean’s car pierced the barriers, a car with no halo would have almost certainly done something so awful to his exposed head that I can’t even bring myself to write it, and yet despite its myriad safety benefits the halo had a rocky reception.
Prior to its introduction some saw the halo breaking with tradition, some suggested it ruined the essence of racing, some thought it obstructed the driver’s vision. That was then but when we look at it today, the presenter and former racing driver Karun Chandock summed it up well during the Grand Prix broadcast when he said, we now see the halo and just think of it as part of the car. How often does something different meet initial resistance only for us, years later, to wonder what all the fuss was about? And how do we move faster through our natural resistance? These thoughts churned through my mind as I watched the race on Sunday morning and by Sunday evening I was offered a solution.
A CNN documentary featured the relationship between inmates at California’s Soledad State prison and the boys at a prep school. Jason Bryant was one of the inmates who helped develop the reading group with prisoners and school kids, and he helped build a program for his fellow inmates to provide financial support for a kid when both the boy’s parents suffered medical emergencies. The TV show presented a scene in which Jason was asking one boy his dream – making it to the NBA. Jason drew a line at the top of a sheet and boldly wrote down that dream. He turned and asked the boy to look back from that point, further down to the empty page, and he asked him what decisions, what actions, what sacrifices he would have made, in every moment, to realize that future in the NBA.
This is similar to an approach I’m following. For the past few months I have begun every day projecting myself three years into the future. I imagine my future self and ask what I might have experienced to help me achieve my goals, and I try to bring that future experience back into the present. If we are shaped by our past experiences, why not be shaped by experiences we have not yet endured?
What I’ve also found through this process is I’m less attached to things in the present that may not serve that future self. Attachment seems to be our hurdle. In my lifetime we have been attached to racing cars without halos, to restaurants with smoking sections, to driving without seatbelts, and in 2020 to faces without masks. We’re attached to our habits, to traditions, to the way things currently feel, ignoring the fact that traditions were once something new, that every habit began with a first action, and that what feels normal is merely an accumulation of consistency. Who new that we might solve our problem with a time machine, and we all have one. These time machines might one day help us save our own lives.
