Do you know this feeling? Someday, you find yourself looking around the faces of your friends – the people who became your family of choice – and notice that they have grown up to young adults full of enthusiasm for life on the quest for an independent and self-determined life. Between talks about career choices and the most recent driving school gossip you find yourself questioning: How did the time fly by so fast? And how will we face up to our future of autonomy?
Sometimes the answers are found to be far closer than they seem…

One of the most important features of autonomy for many of my friends is the good old driver’s license. Consequently, I was able to witness more and more of my friends getting their driver’s license over the past year. The way to this little plastic card everyone seemed overly keen to obtain followed always a similar path:
First, there are the nerve-racking boring theoretical lessons and the seemingly never-ending amount of practice tasks that manage to reduce even the most excited people’s motivation. With the completion of this energy-draining initial phase, the second stage – the stage of desperation – begins.
By the evening before the theory exam at the latest, everyone despairs at the sheer volume of materials to be learned. The desperation drives the most so far that they approach the exam with a new nothing-to-lose-attitude. After passing the exam one way or another, the real struggle begins. As soon as the first driving practice starts, the desperation felt before the theoretical exam turns into a mini existential crisis. Every time my friends told me about the horror stories of their driving practices, I wondered silently if this much pain was worth it only to get this overvalued permit. 

It wasn’t until I saw the uniquely beautiful smiles across their faces when they recounted their first drive completely alone without any driving instructor or parent in the passenger seat that I understood that this whole driver’s license thing was about so much more than the plastic card. Their smiles were beaming but not only out of happiness. All smiled with that wistful tone, the kind that comes when you recall a memory of carefree joy, even though you know about the challenges ahead. It was the smile of a person growing up – a young human being experiencing for the first but by far not the last time the pure beauty and unspoiled gravity of autonomy. 

In retrospect, the journey to my friends’ driver’s license resembles in many ways the process of growing up to independence and self-determination. While the idea of independence sounds at first just as thrilling as the ability to drive anywhere you wish to, one has to learn firstly the many little but quite existential lessons of getting through everyday life. Learning how to wash clothes appropriately and clean the bathroom can be rather boring and annoying and is for sure not less exhausting than having to complete a seemingly infinite amount of practice tasks.

The pure thought of the household-related tasks that one needs to handle all alone is a part of autonomy that bears the potential to cause a similar reaction to the 24 hours before the theoretical exam for the driver’s license. The only way out of this time of desperation and self-doubt is to tackle the problem by its roots, to switch to attack mode, to pull out your nothing-to-lose-mindset and just try your best. Now, this method may work better than in a theoretical exam you did not learn for.

However scary and annoying the household side of autonomy can be, it is a lot less overwhelming than the practical level of independence: taking responsibility and assuming accountability. It is only when trying to balance work, education, social life, health and chores that one realizes: autonomy is about independence and personal responsibility. You cannot be independent without being self-responsible and vice-versa. Balancing life is just as hard and terrifying as practical driving lessons. Still, the hard work of leading an independent and responsible life is equally rewarding as the horror of a driver`s license program. Both are processes of growth and growing up may be a pain but beneath the pain lies a very pure kind of beauty called autonomy. 

Once experiencing what it means to be independent and self-responsible, it becomes clear that the beauty of autonomy is not of the outstanding kind but rather the quiet type. On the open road of life, obstacles and troubles count to the regular companions. They are loud and easily distract one’s attention from the things that count the most. Navigating through the ups and downs of life`s journey, the most precious gift is recognizing the value and power of your autonomy. Independence and personal responsibility are the key to understanding your own, peculiar strength and capacity, thus realizing that you can rely truly on yourself. This quietly emerging self-recognition defines the raw beauty and gravity of autonomy. It is this realization about the endless joy of life and the challenges to come that lets my friends smile wistfully.

In the end, the road to autonomy is very much like absolving the driver’s license program: While not being by any means the easy way to take, it is the path that will leave you with the most unforeseen possibilities, memorable encounters and unexpected moments of happiness. Even though there is not such a thing like a license program that instructs you how to confront autonomy, life has its own way to teach you how to embrace it. So, take the courage and approach autonomy step by step, challenge by challenge. This way you are sure to find yourself on an incredible drive packed full of surprises and the little wonders of life.

Sophia Abegg