As I left for work this morning, I was thinking about sharing a story of being thankful and ‘The Power of Prayer’ for a very different topic than road rage. Then, I started driving and ‘The Power of Prayer’ went in a different direction.
Most of my adult life has been living in a vacation destination city. There are many perks to living in Florida. I get to see the beaches, amazing sunsets, enjoy the weather almost all year, water sports, live entertainment, watch amazing dolphins swim, and the list goes on and on. When I vacationed here in College I felt like the people here must love life and this was the most laid back fun type of environment that one could live. I remember not thinking for a second what my and others vacations and the laid back atmosphere changed for locals. I assumed they were all happy all the time. I mean, they were always smiling when they served me the drinks with the umbrellas, right?
Skip to the last couple days driving. I am running a little behind and the people in front of me are driving 35 in a 45 for no reason at all except they are probably on vacation enjoying our wonderful atmosphere or retired and doing the same. In my head I am telling them to go and then remember that I always hear everything happens for a reason. So, I decide to say a prayer to help me calm my anxiety and just go with it. I am accepting the things that I cannot change. Next, because the traffic is a little heavier right now (I am assuming), a huge truck in oncoming traffic decides that he is going to turn left in front of me when I have a green light. I am going to let that one slide. Then, the cars behind him realize there is nothing we can do on our side and about 4 cars followed him. Now, our green light has turned yellow and red. We have waited through a whole cycle of lights. At this point I feel myself getting irritated again. Now, I know the cars behind me are not happy as well. I know some of them are on their way to work because I see some of the same vehicles every day on my drive. As the light turns green I begin to drive. I will not confirm nor deny that it may have been 5-10 mph over. At this point, I have the opposite thing happening. The truck behind me, I assume is feeling frustrated over some of these previous things, and decides that he can possibly push my car faster if he just rides close enough that we can’t stick a piece of paper between our bumpers. This again gets me a little frustrated. I pray. After he passes we all of the vehicles on both sides come to a complete stop because someone on vacation lost luggage in the middle of the street. She and other were out of their cars all over the road. There have been many more incidents, but I kept thinking to myself that I am glad I wasn’t the person yelling in my car like some of the others. It may be hard to contain sometimes, but that really only makes the person yelling have a worse day because they are upset. Then again, maybe this is ‘my yelling’ and getting it out in a different form. I feel better. What do you do on the road when you are cut off? People riding your bumper? People not driving close to the speed limit? People walking in front of you slowing while you are in the car and not trying to get out of the way?
I will choose today to be thankful that I live here and focus on the scenery and not the drive :
Comments(2)