Driving is a liberating experience. You get your first car, and the first thing you want to do is take it out for a spin. You love the feeling of accelerating on a wide open road without a care in the world. You're seldom worried about being pulled over, crashing or spiraling out of control.

You're focused on what is in front of you and you are more determined to get to wherever life takes you. Whether it's taking a random road trip with friends or getting to an actual destination, you are taking your time and moving at your own pace. The video, Defying her family in Pakistan - BBC News, reminded me of how fortunate I am to have the opportunities I have been given, one of them being to drive a car.

The video focuses on a Pakistani woman named Naema. She is the first woman in her family to attend university and to attain a job. Also, she is not married, which is looked down upon in Pakistani culture. According to one of her relatives, Naema had to be married by the age of 24 in order to maintain her family's honor.

Though Naema family's defiance towards her pursuit of education and income troubled me, the main thing that bothered me was that they disapprove of her possessing her own car. While working for an e-commerce startup, she was earning and saving money for seven years to earn her first car.

A few months before the video was shot, her cousins stole her car and starched one of the doors. Seeing the starch on her car door makes Naema angry every time she looks at it because the hard work she put into earning the car was ruined by her relatives in one day. Keeping this experience in mind, Naema hopes to travel around the world and considers the possibility of settling down in another foreign country so she could make a better life for herself.

Hearing about Naema's story made me infuriated me because the confidence that this intelligent, independent woman had was lowered instantaneously by relatives who were either jealous or ashamed of the success she gained in Pakistani society. She could have cared less if her family did not want her to attend university or not.

She could have cared less if her family wanted her to marry at a young age. All she cared about was that a piece of her freedom was taken away from her when they chose to damage her car. For Naema, driving signified that she had the freedom to choose her own destiny. The fact that she could get in her car and drive away to somewhere else meant to her family that they have little to no control over her.

A strong person like that could persevere through the disapproval and hatred, but ruining her property took away the little freedom she had as a human being.

Naema's experience made reminded me of the road trips I would take with my mother back home and the road trips I would take with my friends at Marist. Whenever I was driving with these people, I felt my surroundings pass me by. I felt relaxed starring out at a window and seeing something new.

It is difficult for me to imagine how different my life would have been without those road trips. Like Naema, I would have felt trapped inside my own house or my own dorm. I would have felt restricted like an animal inside of a cage. I would have felt alienated since I am not going out into the world and experiencing it for myself.

Driving is one of the few freedoms that both men and women are entitled to have because it helps them to search for job opportunities and to obtain an education. Besides the practical aspect of driving, it liberates them from the things that divert them from the stuff that matters.