No Picnic, Yes Lightning

I was driving Joe to his day program. Jacqueline was riding shotgun, so we were listening to classical music. Traffic was moderately heavy, and just a tad bit slow. When I checked my rearview mirror, there was a white sports car tailgating me. I could see the driver flipping his hand up and down in a "Come on!" gesture. But there was no place to come on. He could obviously see that there was a car in front of me. But apparently that wasn't salient information, as he continued to ride my bumper. I looked at my speedometer. I was going 43 miles per hour in a 45 miles per hour stretch. And there was still a car in front of me and cars in the lane to my left. And then the sports car pulled into the turn lane to pass me. I was horrified. There was a car waiting to turn in the other direction not thirty yards ahead. Surely he could see this. Before I could even think to do anything I had hit my brakes and the sports car cut in front of me, missing my left bumper by inches--maybe less. And he almost immediately threw on his brakes and came to a stop as there was a red light ahead.

He had risked my life, the lives of two of my children, his own life, and the life of at least one other person (in the car waiting to turn left) so that he could arrive at a stop light one second earlier than he otherwise would have. 

I don't understand people at all.

And there are times when I don't like them very much.

And that's putting it pretty fucking mildly.

As we proceeded to Joe's day program, we passed a church which had a sign proclaiming, "Practice makes perfect, so be careful what you practice."

It made me think.

Obviously it first made me think of the guy in the sports car, who was practicing being an asshole, and who had pretty much perfected that art.

But then I thought about myself. What is it that I practice? What am I perfecting?

And specifically, what am I practicing when someone does something stupid or dangerous on the road? 

Well, most of the time I get mad and then get over it. If there's anything wrong with that, then I can live with it. But is there more to it than that?

There is. It's about anger. I am beginning to think that I have a lot to say about anger, but I'll save that for later. Maybe a Amazon Kindle Book later, as I think that the "a lot" might be a big "a lot." For now, I'm just thinking about the immediate after-affects of my response to the sports car guy. I was shaken, for sure. But the comments I wrote above about not understanding / liking "people" were quite sincere. I caught a glimpse of the vast trove of despair that I own with respect to my fellow human beings. And how every negative act, big and life threatening or small and just kind of annoying, throws some coin into that trove. I've been practicing . . . and perfecting . . . to erode my faith. I've been practicing despair. It's not that I think it's unwarranted. Not at all. But that is not the important part of it. What effect does this have on me? 

There's a Bible verse (which has long puzzled and frustrated me) which says, 

For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

Matthew 13:12. King James Version

And I think that that actually makes sense to me in terms of this faith and practice and perfecting business. If you have faith in your fellow human beings (or life or God or whatever), then you find evidence to support that faith and your faith grows. If you don't keep any faith in _______________ , then you end up with nothing but despair.

I do not want to succumb to despair.

I do not want to be a namby pamby jellyfish, either.

I've got some work to do.

By the way, the Practice Makes Perfect quote comes courtesy of William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 to October 2, 1842), who was a Unitarian preacher in the early nineteenth century. He sounds like an interesting fellow. I will have to do a little walkabout in his territory.