Just the facts, ma’am
Driving an automobile has been the source of an ongoing life lesson lately, and I’m pretty much ready to have the lesson learned and move on.
Last weekend I had taken my son to Miami for a graduate school audition, and given that we had a few extra hours before the flight home, I wanted him to see Miami Beach. What I didn’t take into account was the nightmare of a Saturday afternoon in February. I really just wanted him to see the historic art-deco hotels, but what we mainly saw was streams of people—lots and lots of people on foot and in cars.
Now I know this: I would rather drive in Los Angeles or New York than on Miami Beach.
Amid this chaos, we unexpectedly got caught behind a car suddenly stopped while waiting to turn left. Then the light changed, and the first car dashed around the corner on the yellow, leaving us stranded in the intersection as the light turned red. What to do? We had to move forward or else get creamed from the oncoming traffic.
As we inched forward to clear the intersection, three able-bodied elderly people began crossing the street (not in the crosswalk, I might add), defiant of our presence. All three of them shouted angrily at us, and one of the group banged her fist loudly on our car.
Should we have been clearing the intersection on a red light? No. Was this preventable? Only with the foreknowledge that the car ahead of us would stop and do what it did.
And yet, these pedestrians were convinced we were out to intentionally run them over, to violate their space—based on the partial information they had witnessed. They could not have seen how we ended up stranded in the intersection. They only saw that we were in their way.
Just a few days earlier, I had a similar experience in Dallas, traveling on a two-lane road where another driver mistakenly assumed it was a one-way road going only her way and rolled down her window to give me a piece of her mind.
Both drivers made faulty assumptions based on incomplete facts; in one case from lack of a complete vantage point and the other from lack of paying attention to the clearly marked road signs. And while I would like to portray myself as the perpetual innocent victim, I realize that I, too, have made similar mistakes and accusations before.
This desire to lash out before gaining all the facts seems to be part of the human condition. How often do we assume we know what’s really going on, when in reality we don’t have a clear view?
We all fall into this trap on issues beyond driving. This is, in part, what polarizes our national political climate. It is the root of many a theological divide. It’s why many of us cannot read the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We’ve got our minds made up, and we are certain we are right.
In reality, Jesus’ command that we love neighbor as self is a daily two-way street that requires all of us to begin with humility and to consider the possibility that our views might be wrong, might be based on faulty perceptions.
Scripture teaches us that “Love is patient, love is kind. … Love does not insist on its own way.” And we might add this to the list: Love stops long enough to consider that I might be wrong.