Maybe they...

I wonder if people are less self-absorbed in countries with better public transportation.  Here it seems like people are only aware of their own trajectories, that their journeys are the only ones of any importance.  I mean that in both ways – in their cars, and in their lives in general.

My kiddo and I love playing the “maybe they” game in the car.  When a jerk is riding my tail and then passes on the right while flipping me off, of course my first instinct is to let my rage take over – step on the gas so they can’t get in front of me, then force them back behind me, and slow back down or even slam on the brakes.  Or if I’m feeling more gloomy and less rage-y, maybe I start crying and get depressed over how terrible the world is, full of people like that.  Why do they have to be so mean?  Why can’t they just try to understand where I am coming from, validate that my journey is just as important as theirs, that I also have good reasons for driving according to my preferences? 

But I have always been

sensitive. 

Anyway, the “maybe they” game.  If I’m angry that they can’t imagine MY story, then I’m being hypocritical if I don’t also try to imagine THEIR story.  So we come up with as many possibilities as we can to explain their actions without just labeling them an asshat.

Maybe they just found out their best friend’s dog is dying, and they are rushing to console their friend.

Maybe they need to get to the hospital because their mom is on her way there by ambulance following a fall down the stairs.

Maybe their partner just publicly shamed them out of a manipulative desire to get them to overreact, and it worked (we all have buttons, if you know how to push them), and now they are so mad at both their partner and themselves for falling into the trap - yet again - that they just needed an escape, needed to get out of town, out to the interstate where they could feel free and unaffected by everybody else’s bullshit.

Okay, maybe I don’t get quite that advanced when playing this game with my 9-year-old – he doesn’t need to hear about my own relationship history.  =)

But maybe we just can’t imagine what this other person is going through, maybe our own imaginations are just too limited by our own experiences.  Maybe this person has a good reason.  Maybe not.  Either way, playing this game signals my brain to stop cementing a single storyline into permanence.   I cannot know the “truth”, and it doesn’t even fucking matter.  What matters to me, to my little bubble in my private little car in my self-absorbed little journey, is that I don’t let that person’s storyline affect my own, because in “truth,” I don’t know shit.  What matters to the universe, to humanity, to the bigger picture of all of us, is that maybe if we can all let go of bullshit storylines we can’t understand, we’ll all stop reacting based on what we think we know.  Maybe then we can power down all those self-destructive buttons.