When Road Rage Restores Your Hope for Humanity

After a recent morning workout, I headed home from the gym in rush hour traffic.

While I drove, I watched another commuter start turning towards me—and I wound up in his blind spot. He inched into my lane, and I was certain he would he hit me—especially if he couldn't see me. So I honked.

He didn't like that.

He honked back and yelled, and I probably yelled, too. I gave him a dirty look. I regretted it when we found ourselves parked beside each other at the next red light. I rolled my eyes when he rolled down a window and yelled some more.

Then I threw a hand behind my ear and smirked while I mouthed that "I CAN'T HEAR YOU." My contempt didn't faze him. Fine, I thought. You wanna talk? Let's talk. And I rolled my window down, too.

"May I help you?!" I shouted.

"People like you," he pointed at me, "are the reason that other drivers get mad!"

"Oh, ok—" I yelled back while I nodded, and noticed the kids in his backseat. "Well, you know what? I apologize for 'making you mad,' and I hope that you'll forgive me. But YOU scared me," I said. "I thought you were going to hit me!"

What followed shocked me.

The instant I shouted "you scared me," his expression changed from angry to compassionate. The man melted. We silently stared at each other for a second before he spoke again.

"I'm sorry, too," he said, quietly. "I'm really sorry."

My jaw dropped. "Uh, I forgive you." I said, stunned.

Then the light turned green and we both drove away. We'll probably never see each other again. But for the rest of my ride home, I thought one thought: best road rage incident ever.

Caught up in our own bubbles

I've been here before. My most repeated sin is probably failure to love my fellow commuters. My most angry observations are the ones I make while I drive.

It irks me because it's serious—lives are at stake. But we're each so stuck in our bubbles and on our schedules that we stop caring. The morning of the Best Road Rage Incident Ever, I realized: we do the same thing when we get mad at each other while we drive; we stop caring about another driver because we have places to be.

From inside our car bubbles that divide us, we mutter under our breath or we yell, we shake our fists or wave an unfortunate finger. But both our bubbles burst that morning when we decided to roll down our windows and see each other face to face.

The importance of being considerate

But this isn't about trying to talk it out with everybody who makes a mistake on the road. It's about what that guy and I remembered about each other when we did.

That we're human.

That sometimes we startle each other and that startled people often do silly, or even reckless, things. The fact that we remembered this diffused the tension between us and infused my life with a renewed hope for humanity.

I drove away knowing something I'd forgotten; life's a lot less tense when we're considerate of each other.