Among the things I wasn’t thrilled about having to deal with upon returning to Northern Virginia was traffic. This is a universal complaint of any metropolitan area, I know.
There’s just sooo many cars down here. And they’re being driven by sooo many different sorts of people.
People who are paying attention. People who aren’t paying attention. People who are brand new drivers. People who are experienced drivers but who are new to the Northern Virginia Driving Experience (which would be the worst amusement park ride ever). People who aren’t sure where they are going. People who do know where they are going. People who know where they are going but still wait to the last minute to get into the appropriate lanes they need to be in thus forcing other people in the turn lane to slam on their breaks and miss the light. People who are staring at their phones. People with poor vision. People who are yelling at their kids in the way back to stop touching each other for the love of god or we’re turning around and there will be no fun for the foreseeable future. People who are cautious. People who are outright terrified to be driving with sooo many other cars. People who are in a hurry. People who think they are in a hurry.
People who aren’t in a hurry but who prefer to drive at high speeds even on narrow roads where the speed limit is only 35.
I was driving in front of one such driver recently. Actually, that’s not precise. I don’t know what type of driver this person was. Only that he or she was in an earth-toned SUV driving on a narrow, crowded four-lane road who seemed to want to go significantly faster than I was (which was in the vicinity of the 35 MPH speed limit). I know this because said driver seemed to want to “nudge” my rear bumper with his front bumper (why else would he be driving so closely?). Maybe he or she was only trying to deliver a friendly shoulder bump or a flirtatious tap. Who’s to say what was going on in his head? Just to be safe, I switched lanes at the earliest opportunity. The SUV sped past me. Then had to break behind the next car, which also switched lanes to allow it to pass.
I found my hackles rising. My eyebrows going all Lewis Black. That delicious feeling of righteous indignation rising up from my belly. I mean this guy. THIS GUY.
There was a horn I was tempted to honk. A finger I was tempted to wave. But I stopped myself. As I do every other time I’m confronted with an individual who seems to eschew safety and/or manners on the road.
I reminded myself that I had no idea who that person was or the reason behind his aggressive driving. For all I knew he could’ve just received the call that his beloved mother was taking her last breaths and was racing toward her bedside. He could’ve really been craving some mozzarella sticks from the Sheetz up the road. Or maybe he was just an asshole. Who’s to say?
Not me.
It’s really easy to find things to be mad about in life. I’m the mother of three. My 8 year old, evidently, was born knowing everything there possibly is to know. My 6 year old has been known to cry despondently when tasked with such strenuous activities as returning books to shelves or putting her laundry away. My almost-6-month-old is fond of using her tiny pincer fingers to grab the little hairs at the nape of my neck and pull them into her mouth. I live on the spectrum of befuddlement to frustration to all-out rage most days. Perpetually on the brink of an indignant rant about the various dirty socks littering the house or the nightly complaints about how the dinner is either too spicy or too bland.
I know how to get mad.
And man. Sometimes when I’m gathering up all my mom rage I feel like Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” right after she accidentally kills Flotsam and Jetsam. The part when she starts making that awkward groaning noise and puffs up into a giant sea witch drunk on her own power.
You know the scene.
I’m all, like, “You’re gonna tell me you can’t clean up your room after I made you pancakes for breakfast and took your sledding and let you have hot chocolate and listened to your recite (approximately) 7 billion facts about dinosaurs and helped you build a fort and let you have a friend over? OH HELL NO CHILD. DON’T MAKE ME USE MY GIANT GLOWING TRIDENT. WHEN I’M DONE, YOU WON’T HAVE A ROOM LEFT TO CLEAN!!!!” [Uses trident to destroy Baby Alive, LOL Surprise Eggs, And all the Legos left on the floor.]
What’s that? I’ve gone off track? Where we we?
Oh right, the part where I don’t explode into a red-faced, frothing buffoon in the wake of an aggressive driver.
Here’s the thing. Getting mad about these inconsequential things is like eating too much sugar. It feels good in the moment, and you crave more of it and you feel productive because of it, but it always ends in a crash that doesn’t feel so good at all.
So instead of investing my limited energy resources into fueling some dead-end sort of irritation out in the world, I’ve been trying to make it a practice of letting it go.
Just, switching lanes and moving forward.
And I gotta say, it feels good. It’s calming. It gives me back a sense of balance to my life and the feeling of control that whoever “slighted” me might’ve taken away had I given into my anger.
At first, reacting by not reacting feels like being passive. Like letting the world walk all over me. I’ve done that plenty in my life.
But I’ve kind of decided to reframe it in my head. See, it’s not passive if I’m making a choice- if I’m choosing to let the petty affronts go. In that moment, I’m actively making a decision. And better yet, I’m making a decision that will serve me. It strengthens a muscle in me- the one that demands we turn the other cheek (is it the neck muscle? The Jesus muscle? I’m not great with anatomy).
I can fight aggression with more aggression or with passive aggression, or I can volley back compassion.
As I’m writing this, I feel like this is an act of love. Like, not a grand gesture. Or, something sentimental. But something human and earthbound. Something simple and doable. I can forgive a fault on the spot, in the moment. I can sow love on this crowded road full of all these strangers going about their days in the thick of their own lives.
All the sudden that feels much bigger than just muttering “asshole” under my breath.
This practice is as important at home as it is out in the world. I think it can almost be easier to forgive a stranger for their perceived faults then it can be the people closest to us. With these people- our children, our spouses, our parents and siblings, our friends- our familiarity makes us assume too much about their motives and intent when they do something that frustrates us or lets us down.
Like how I assume my children are thoughtless, unappreciative jerks who purposefully leave messes for me to pick up because they don’t care about my time. When really, they’re just easily distracted small people who would be heartbroken to learn I mistake their forgetfulness or their whiney-ness for a sign of poor character or worse, a lack of love for me.
They’re human- in the process of growing and becoming just as I am.
I just started listening to the book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari.
Harari writes about how, compared with other species, Homo Sapien’s jump to the top of the food chain was incredibly fast. How, typically, the ecosystem has checks and balances to prevent other species like lions or sharks from getting too powerful. As lions became deadlier, for instance, gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas started cooperating more effectively and rhinos become more ill-tempered.
“In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.”
I wonder if the only way to get past our existence in this banana republic dictatorship is to make an active choice to be better than we are. If our extraordinary brain size is the thing that has given us these extraordinary advantages, then it can also be the thing that helps restore balance to our ecosystem.
And maybe it starts by each of us as individuals making small choices throughout our day to be kinder. To empathize. To view love as a muscle. One that strengthens as much in our actions toward strangers as it does toward friends and family.
Homo Sapien means wise man (the name we “immodestly” gave ourselves notes Harari.)
Wise. “Marked by deep understanding, keen discernment, and a capacity for sound judgment,” according to Merriam-Webster.
“Having or showing good judgment, or the ability to make good judgments, based on what you have learned from your experience,” according to Cambridge Dictionary.
And maybe it starts by each of us as individuals making small choices throughout our day to be kinder. To empathize. To view love as a muscle. One that strengthens as much in our actions toward strangers as it does toward friends and family.
Homo Sapien means wise man (the name we “immodestly” gave ourselves notes Harari.)
Wise. “Marked by deep understanding, keen discernment, and a capacity for sound judgment,” according to Merriam-Webster.
“Having or showing good judgment, or the ability to make good judgments, based on what you have learned from your experience,” according to Cambridge Dictionary.
Given our propensity to repeat history, I’m not sure we’re worthy of our self-assigned name yet. But maybe we can get there.
The same day I dealt with that aggressive driver, I found myself stuck behind a giant, bumbling dump truck. There was nowhere to pass it, so I was forced to go at a dump truck’s pace for a few miles.
I read the words, “DO NOT PUSH” painted on the rear of the truck.
“Do not push.”
I’m not sure for whom the message was intended. Was it me? A warning not to follow too closely? Was it for whoever might need to interact with the rear of the dump truck? Maybe it had nothing to do with the truck. Maybe it was the driver who didn’t want to be pushed? The words seemed kind of unnecessary. Who pushes a dump truck?
Having dealt with an aggressive driver earlier in the day, I heeded the truck and kept my distance. It seemed like the smartest move. Even though I’m now the reluctant driver of an oxymoronic minivan (if it’s so mini, why the hell do I feel like I take up half the road while I’m driving it? I prefer to remain incognito on the road. The minivan makes me feel as if I’m riding a brachiosaurus through traffic) I’m pretty sure the dump truck would win the matchup.
As I’m wont to do when ambling behind slow-moving, passive aggressive dump trucks my mind started to wander. I turned the phrase around in my head. “Do not push.”
That I was seeing it at that moment, just on the heels of having kind of been pushed out of the way myself by another driver… well it seemed significant. It felt like a message I needed to hear.
In that moment, it seemed to be about slowing down. Allowing something other than my right foot and the accelerator to dictate the pace of my life.
Maybe it also has to do with allowing what will be to be (I mean, what will be, will be, whether I have any say it in or not). Do not push ahead. Do not push your agenda. Do not push other people.
It felt like, again, an instruction to be more passive. Which seems to run counter to everything we were raised to believe as Americans. We are not a people that accepts unwanted circumstances. That settles for less. We always push on. We always climb the next mountain. We always try to keep up. We always try to be better.
The goal of improving ourselves and our society is noble and lofty, for sure. But maybe our methods are wrong.
“Do not push.”
Last night, Lily was reading, “A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr.” to me.
It talks about how Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the “Whites only” section of a bus. It talks about how MLK Jr. led a protest of her arrest- how blacks in the city of Montgomery, Alabama refused to ride the buses. It talked about how someone threw a bomb in King’s house and how King told his followers, who’d wanted to fight, to go home peacefully.
“We must love our white brothers,” he said. We must meet hate with love.”
In that moment, it seemed to be about slowing down. Allowing something other than my right foot and the accelerator to dictate the pace of my life.
Maybe it also has to do with allowing what will be to be (I mean, what will be, will be, whether I have any say it in or not). Do not push ahead. Do not push your agenda. Do not push other people.
It felt like, again, an instruction to be more passive. Which seems to run counter to everything we were raised to believe as Americans. We are not a people that accepts unwanted circumstances. That settles for less. We always push on. We always climb the next mountain. We always try to keep up. We always try to be better.
The goal of improving ourselves and our society is noble and lofty, for sure. But maybe our methods are wrong.
“Do not push.”
Last night, Lily was reading, “A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr.” to me.
It talks about how Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the “Whites only” section of a bus. It talks about how MLK Jr. led a protest of her arrest- how blacks in the city of Montgomery, Alabama refused to ride the buses. It talked about how someone threw a bomb in King’s house and how King told his followers, who’d wanted to fight, to go home peacefully.
“We must love our white brothers,” he said. We must meet hate with love.”
Rosa Parks sat down.
Protestors didn’t ride the bus.
King’s followers clenched their firsts, but went home peacefully.
Maybe what looks like a passivity is actually something much greater.
For millennia we’ve compensated for our fear and anxieties with shows of might- taking up more space, constructing mightier fortresses, building bigger bombs, creating more sophisticated weapons, amassing more and more stuff, telling stories at greater and greater volumes about whose religion or politics or philosophies or way of life is superior.
And here we are.
If we are really Homo Sapien, Wise Man, We need to learn from our experiences. Not do the same thing over and over, while praying for different results.
“We must meet hate with love.” That is what will transform us. Make us worthy of our name.
“Do not push.”
I’m not exactly sure what I am to do with that. Or even if I need to do anything. Maybe they were just meaningless words on a truck.
Or maybe, as with so many things in life, I’m meant to sit here with them rolling around in my head. An uncomfortable place with no real answer, no real solution, no real call to action.
I’ve often found that when I’m struggling to make sense of a thought or an idea that I need to let go. Just the way I have to do when I’m struggling with feelings of anger or frustration. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Don’t push it.