About Staying In Your Lane.

These new cars, man. They talk to you, park themselves, wake you up when you’re sleepy at the wheel. But the one thing that stands out is the lane assist feature – bringing you back into your lane when the vehicle is moving off its course.Men, with all the love we have for our cars, could have done with this feature in our software. The ability to stay in your lane.

It would help us understand that the unassuming guy we make a point of buying beers for has children in top private schools, substantial savings and probably building his third or fifth block of student accommodation. 

We all know that nobody shows us their losses. But it’s the cunning ones who don’t even show you their wins. Keeping cards close to their chest so that nobody knows what level of success or failure they’re at. 

It’s called staying in your lane. 

You don’t know if they rent or own the house they live in, no idea the car they drive, how they spent Christmas or who they’re licking their lips to vote for in 2026. 

This type of man has inadvertently led other men astray. It probably begins in school where he spends the day uninterested in education but studies hard in the night. 

And it shows when the results come through. The clown you dismiss continues to top the class. It progresses into adulthood with a twist.

This time, he’s playing safe. If he’s sitting with you at a table, he spends no more than what he has budgeted for. Three drinks and that’s it. 

It’s not because he doesn’t have the resources. It’s that his is a 40 kilometers per hour lane where he spends within his means. To you, he’s struggling because he doesn’t splurge on the platters, new iPhone, latest model of his vehicle or maintain several light skin girls across the city.

So you take pity on him. Poor fella is not living the life. Buying him his drinks or sending him money for fuel so he can come and unwind from his pressures. 

But who at this point needs lane assist? Is it the man who maintains his pace in life or the one who overextends himself to posture success in his circle of friends and associates? 

The inability to discern that we’re all at different levels of our lives has been our undoing. 

Over time, we lose friends because they feel they have elevated above us or we feel inferior to them. We then use all these signposts such as career, neighbourhood, car and social capital to determine if we’re keeping pace. 

Make no mistake about it. We’re in a rat race.

Everybody’s in their own lane. Going downhill, approaching sharp turns, cruising with unmarked humps, potholes ahead, gravel roads, super highway. But we’re all moving, gents.