I often wonder about humans. And everyday something happens
that makes me wonder even more.
I was driving home from school and was tired and brain
fried. The street I was on is often busy and not engineered for
efficiency. It passes in front of a
church and private school. On this day, traffic was getting bunched up, but it
began to move slowly so I went slowly with it. Well, of course, it stopped and
I had to stop. My timing and location were not ideal. I was right in front of
one of the exits from the church parking lot. It wouldn’t have been a big deal
except that there was a ‘gentleman’ trying to leave the parking lot and he was
none pleased that I stopped where I did.
He stared at me as though I had just insulted his mother. If
looks could kill, I would have been slaughtered! Had he not had his wife and
child in the vehicle, he might have jumped out and taken a bat to my
windshield.
Fortunately, after staring at me for a minute or so, he
decided to squeeze through the space just wide enough for him to pull out in
front of me. Being the lady that I am, I waved him on through instead of
returning his dirty looks.
Traffic moved about then and he sped away like a bat out of
hell.
I saw this as a microcosm of human behavior. Admittedly, I
was not entirely present and had I been, I might have stopped further back. And
I think that many of us, much of the time, are not entirely present. We are
preoccupied with often negative thoughts; the economy sucks, the bills are due,
we hate our jobs. We are also busy; we have to get to work, pick up the kids,
go to the grocery store.
All this busyness and preoccupation keeps us from giving the
current situation our full attention and so we make mistakes. Here’s the other
problem. People often take those mistakes as personal transgressions. And they
flip the bird or yell at you or threaten you. Sometimes the only mistake you
made was being anywhere near them while they were in a bad mood. There are a lot of angry people in the
world. And I don’t always blame them. Life is unfair, life is tough, and it
takes a lot to keep your patience and compassion. And the more you deal with
people who cut you off in traffic, the easier it is to become jaded about the
human race.
Now, I have vowed to work on keeping a positive attitude and
I like to think that most humans are good by nature. So, I don’t want to bad
mouth that man. Maybe he is actually really nice. Maybe he had to rush home to
a sick child. Maybe he had been cut off in traffic multiple times that day. I
don’t know. But part of becoming a better human being is putting yourself in
the other person’s place. Try to understand what the other person is thinking
or feeling. Patience, forgiveness, empathy. Maybe that man could have spared a
little patience for me. I’m not always inconsiderate. In fact, most of the
time, I let people get in front of me or pull out of a parking lot.
I guess in the end, the fact remains that we humans are
selfish creatures. We find it difficult to think of other people or how our
behavior might affect them. We make mistakes but find it difficult to forgive
others of their mistakes. All that matters is what we want or need, where we
have to go and what we have to do.
While I wonder what the world would be like if we were all
endlessly patient and deeply compassionate, I know that there are lots of good
people in the world doing good things for others. There are plenty of big
hearts and open minds to balance out the cold souls. People who love and
forgive and always smile at other people, even those who are rude and mean. People
who refrain from judging or taking their anger out on others. There are people who
offer a helping hand and never expect anything in return. People who take the time, who have the awareness to think about walking a mile in someone else's shoes before they react.
I wonder how they do
it.
