Three Strangers Challenged Me to Slow Down

One of them was dead

Photo by Norbert Braun on Unsplash

I was trying to get across town in the middle of heavy rush-hour traffic when the vehicles in front of me came to a full stop.

A long, defiant red light turned momentarily green in the distance before quickly cycling back to yellow, and then again to red, where it remained for a far longer time than the green signal that allowed us to move.

I let out a sigh and tried to surrender to the reality of the circumstance. We were going to be here a while.

I’m attached to the idea of being an efficient and productive person, which means it’s a challenge for me to slow down internally when there’s legitimately nothing to be done. The compulsion to check some kind of task off my list often leads me to reach for my phone in such instances.

“I’ll just quickly check my messages,” I thought.

As my screen came to life with my foot on the brake, I saw that Substack had unread notifications and navigating there I was immediately delivered a note inviting me to peruse the best movies of the 21st century, which . . . dumb I know . . . I began to read.

I don’t know how this happened, or honestly exactly how much time had passed, but I got engrossed in the note, and when my present awareness returned I remembered with a jolt that I was sitting in my car in the middle of active traffic.

Looking up, the road in front of me was miraculously completely clear for about 200 yards ahead.

There I was at a standstill, missing the opportunity for actual bonafide movement because my mind was busy speeding nowhere.

With a rush of panic I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw that indeed, I was now the only reason that all the cars lined up south of my bumper were not moving.

But looking at the driver immediately behind me, I saw a composed gentleman sitting behind the wheel, patiently waiting for me to notice the open road.

He didn’t beep, honk, grimace, or shoot me any kind of look, other than a soft smile, like he might have been thinking, “Ah, silly humans.” Or even, “Hey man, you’re good . . . I’ve been in your shoes before.”

Who does this?!

What are the chances these days of running into somebody with that level of tolerance, presence, or character in the middle of rush hour traffic?

I quickly pulled forward, but what I wanted to do was park, hop out of my car and go give this guy a massive hug for having a little bit of patience with someone who was being a sloppy steward of his attention.

Yes, we have individual brains, but there’s also a group mind, and when one person takes responsibility for the public psyche by acting with dignified restraint when another one is acting like a goof—we’re all lifted up.

Indeed, I was still contemplating this notable act of cultural hygiene the next morning when I got up at 4:30 am to drive across town and do my stair workout so that I could get back in time for my 6 am Zoom session with my writing community.

So once again, I was in a hurry.

But there was no one else on the road and I enjoyed the fact that the vast majority of the lights triggered to green as I approached them and sailed through.

I completed my exercise session, but by the time I was speeding home to make the session, I could feel how tense I was racing against the clock. For some reason large black crows appeared all along the way, skittering and hopping across the road in front of me, like they were in on the universe’s plan to slow me down. Even with the benefit of green lights, I had still created a circumstance of scarcity and pressure in the midst of a beautiful summer morning.

“I really have to get a handle on this,” I thought. “I need to relax.”

Finally I was one block from home and pulled up to the final traffic light of my cross-town trip.

It was red.

I was the only car idling at the crosswalk.

I was annoyed that I had to stop at all and that this final light was not better timed to automatically detect my approach and turn green for my passage. Then again, I reflected on my agitation.

“Life’s too short to be so invested in speed,” I thought to myself.

Just then, an old gray Toyota Corolla came slowly rolling into view through the intersection in front of me. Whoever it was, they weren’t in a hurry. The back seat of the vehicle was full to the brim with belongings, the owner perhaps living out of their car.

Now it was passing directly in front of me.

The driver was an unshaven elderly man with two hands on the steering wheel, fixated on the road ahead—but sitting next to him riding shotgun in the passenger seat was a full-size . . . human . . . skeleton.

I blinked several times and my jaw went slack as I stared at the vacant sockets of its eyes and the empty space in its skull where a human brain had been. A brain that had once contemplated what it needed to get done each day and animated that very stack of bones in the pursuit of a lifetime of hopes and dreams that undoubtedly did and didn’t come true.

Yes, I really saw this.

Sometimes I’m accused of looking for ways to extract meaning from the world around me, when perhaps it’s all more of a random show than I’d wish. I understand the concept of selective attention and that we interpret our environment and experience to suit the narratives we need or want to hear.

But I also believe that if we’re willing to pay attention, we can catch a glimpse of a supremely intelligent weave and order that might otherwise go unnoticed. And that we can tune our perception to the details of our lives in a way that reveals a delightful and instructional show that exists as perfect guidance for our unfolding.

The man behind me in traffic the day before, the driver of the Toyota, and the bare impermanent skeleton of time—were all inviting me to slow down.

I wonder if I’ll listen.