Walk a Mile

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.