Today in traffic I could see that the vehicle that was three vehicles forward of me had begun signalling to turn left. I could also see that there was a fair amount of oncoming traffic, so I quickly made a lane change and bypassed everyone that had to wait for that one to make its turn. As I passed, the thought that went through my mind was “Haha! I’m ahead of all of those guys now.” But then I started to think “Is this really ahead?” Maybe in doing that I placed myself on a trajectory with a vehicle that is about to run a red light. In that situation I saw a tidy little metaphor for the nature of life and maybe more than that.
There is no way to know what awaits us around the next corner. We may feel that we have security or that we have some sort of control, because we have made “plans” or because we are continually moving “forward”, or because we are beating our competition, or climbing some kind of ladder. But really this is just an illusion. Plans are our own, and while we may be able to have some influence over our social situations, the rest of the universe doesn’t know about our plans, nor does it care. It simply does what it does and the best you can do is deal gracefully with whatever comes your way. It may be something excruciatingly painful, or it may be something excruciatingly beautiful — something good beyond your wildest imaginings. There are no guarantees. There are only events. And it is what you do with those events — how you react to them, what good you make of them, how you choose to integrate them into your self — that gives life meaning.
When I look at things this way, far from instilling fear in me, it tends to instill calm. The message is this:
You don’t really have control. Don’t get too uptight about where you are in life, or that you don’t have what some other person has — they might get hit by a bus tomorrow, and so might you. Take what comes and make the best of it that you can. Every day.
I had a similar experience getting off a commuter train at 5pm as I was watching people in suits and heels sprinting past me in the tunnel as they raced to their cars. It was the closest thing I can image to feeling like an rodent in a rat race. Instead of being swept up by the franicked pace and scurrying along to get out ahead of the others, I thought: “you know, even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”
“Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”
I like that. 🙂
When something bad happens to someone,people tend to blame God or that God is somehow responsible for it. What people don’t understand is that God gave us a free will and we are at the mercy of everyone else’s free will and their choices. Over the years we have become a global community which makes us even more fragile. We can choose to do what’s right and good and we should, but that doesn’t mean a drunk driver won’t run a red light and hit us. We all need to live by the golden rule of “Do unto others as they would do unto you.” and the world would be a much better place. Until we stop making money and consumerism our God, we will not stop global warming and the destruction of the planet.