Beep, Beep
I watched a big old pickup bear down on me yesterday while driving on highway 290 on the road into Blanco from Spring Branch. It was obvious it was going somewhere in a hurry. It wanted to pass but didn’t really appreciate the passing lane was running out. But it wanted by, so I drifted onto the improved shoulder as the road narrowed and let it go. I was pretty pleased with myself. I was unperturbed, as in I didn’t care.
It's been a long, strange journey learning to let the violence of the highway slide around me, detaching myself from the actions of others and letting them be just that actions, requiring only a driving response and nothing emotional from me. There are still moments when I talk out loud to other drivers, but they are more and more infrequent. That was a bad habit and I’m learning to let it go. I think I sleep better.
As I was thinking about the incident this morning and considered how many miles I’ve driven in anger over my life, I thought of how many other people are doing the same thing around the country. Driving from here to there, cursing other drivers, cursing the road, cursing the weather. It seems pretty inevitable, given how much most people drive every day, that some of that anger might spill over into other parts of our lives--politics, religion, sports. You name it. Think of all the places where we’ve seen angry people. The car may have given us a lot of freedom to go, but maybe the price was higher than we ever expected.