The Jerk in the Other Car

Sadly, I was involved in a traffic accident last week, which has resulted in my beloved Prius being totaled. I collected the check yesterday and handed over the title. Sigh! Poor little beat-up, abandoned car. You served me well.

Here's what happened. Traffic slowed down for a car turning ahead. The young man in the big Chevy Tahoe didn't slow down soon enough and rear-ended me. He was probably driving about 35 mph. It wasn't much of a bump, no one was hurt, but it was devastating to my little car. Too expensive to repair, they said.

The interesting aspect of this experience to me is what other people have said to me about it. They have called him "jerk in the other car." And when I said he was young, he was immediately assumed to be texting on his phone. Others have expressed how terrible it is the way people like him race up and down Hwy. 24, and other such comments.

I think maybe he was following a little too close and maybe looked away for a moment. Haven't you had that, "oh, shit" moment when you realize that the car in front of you is slowing and you have to really brake hard to avoid hitting it? This young man didn't quite make it.

He got out of the car and immediately apologized. His nice wife and darling little boy got out and talked to me. At one point he offered to drive me home. We talked quietly while waiting for the police officer to make his report. He didn't seem to be a jerk. It was just a stupid accident. He made some kind of mistake. I felt bad that the accident happened, but I could not work myself up into a froth over it.

So does that make him the jerk in the other car? I don't think so. It was just a stupid accident. No one was hurt.

It Isn't a Competition

I returned to Facebook about a year ago, and I'm experiencing both the addictive nature of the beast and increasing dismay. It is, in every way, a battlefield, a pure, unadulterated reflection of life as we know it.

Communication has its origins, I think, in the word "community". It's about us and our relationships with each other. Words are important, they express, more than anything who we are. We think we are talking about other people; but we are really only expressing ourselves. 

Words are used so carelessly these days. Careless people fling out words in sound bites that sound like they mean something, but I think we have little clue. I hear "Hitler", "Democratic", "Republican", "Immigrant", the F-Word; the N-Word; and so on. These words are shocking, or they used to be, but now I hear them flung about as ammunition in the battle for My Side; My View; My Beliefs. If words could kill, there would be a lot of dead people formerly on FB. Oh, wait, that has already happened.

We lament the fact that representatives of our government have lost the ability to work together; to compromise; to negotiate; to get anything done. Why are we surprised by this? We elected them, based on their declared intention to do nothing more than oppose anyone who disagrees with them. They are a reflection of how we conduct ourselves in our own lives. The tone of our rhetoric and conduct is "My way or I'll run over you on the highway!"

We just seem to be against everything and for so little. This is only a little planet, and we are all human beings together here. The problems of our world; the hopes, the joys; the fears are all ours together. It is not a competition. No one is gong to win - not the current argument on Facebook or anything else. There are no winners. There are only angry, fearful, gun-toting people who feel increasingly alienated from each other. I'm afraid too. I'm afraid for our earth; our children; our future. 

We talk about God and love endlessly. They are also words we fling about carelessly. True faith and love is evidenced in our speech and our actions, not in FB postings. By the way, I hope the God I know is not spending time reading Facebook. Until we act with the love and faith we profess, I fear that we are all going down.

After weeks of relentless heat, cool, soaking rain this morning since before light. Sheets of rain blow across the yard. Dark pines dance the background. An elated tree frog croaks .

"Developing wisdom, clarity, basic sanity and compassion in your life expresses the Dharma of realization. This is your daily work: this is how you make your life sacred.

Truth is about getting free, not getting high."  - Lama Surya Das

This is how you make your life sacred.