I Hate Boxes

It wasn't really that hard to love and honor the people closest to me. I could look in their eyes, hug them, laugh with them, cry with them, and easily see them, see in whose image they were made.

It was sometimes tougher to do that with others-- neighbors, co-workers, strangers, my nemesis. But not really all that tough once I started trying. I could still look them in the eyes.

But bad drivers... That one's been tougher. Not impossible, but tougher.

For years, my main transportation was a motorcycle. Motorcyclists refer to cars as boxes. Many car drivers are so trapped in their little box they have no clue what is going on around them. This is especially perturbing when you are exposed on a motorcycle. Several years in a Miata weren't that much different. Even now, in a Mazda 3, dwelling in the Land of Pickups and SUVs, it can be unnerving on a daily basis (think MoPac).

I learned to loathe certain types of boxers-- the clueless, the uncaring, the inattentive, the aggressive, the downright vicious. A while back I decided to love and honor these people, too. Some days it's *really* hard. Why is that?

It's for the same reason, I think, that motorcyclists labeled them as box drivers to begin with. There's a wall there, and some drivers can't or won't see through it, and I can't easily see through it, either. I can't look them in the eye. It's hard to see the human being in there. I certainly can't know them well. I can't even engage them in discussion.

But I do my best. Despite their driving habits and skills or lack thereof, they're moms, dads, children, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, grand-kids, friends, coaches, and so forth. They matter, too. We have the same Daddy. So I pray for their peace as well as mine.

Oddly enough, the more I'm able to do this, the happier and less stressed I am when I get wherever I'm going. If only I could get this message across. But while driving, hand gestures are about all that's available, and somehow they don't do the job.

So I bless them, and pray for them, and love them.

Occasionally I still flash my brights at them when they pull over a car length in front of me on the interstate, but most days it's more an attempt to communicate how foolish they're being rather than what I used to try to communicate, which was more along the lines of "I wish these were blasters fired by Chewbacca to wipe your foolish driving habits off the map!"