Yesterday, I was on my lunch time walk and had an interesting experience. It lasted perhaps less than 2 seconds and yet I've been thinking about it on and off ever since. I was trundling along at my usual brisk pace, on the right-hand side of the path. A few yards off, I spied a man walking toward me on my side of the sidewalk, two trains heading toward each other on the same track. As we grew closer, I instinctively hugged the right-hand margin a little closer and he did the same. When it became clear that we were on a collision course, the image of the old Dr. Seuss story about the North-going Zax and the South-going Zax popped into my head.
In the story, the two Zaxes meet and stand there for years, each too stubborn to give way to the other, while a city grows up around them. For about a quarter of a second, I contemplated such a pissing contest and realized that such a course of action did not advance my goal of getting back to work in time for my 2:00 meeting. So I swerved left and we both passed on unimpeded. As I moved out of the way, I noticed the man smirk ever so slightly with one corner of his mouth. I don't begrudge him his perceived victory; in fact he taught me something interesting.
Since we happen to drive on the right hand side of the road by law, we allow this convention to bleed over into other aspects of life where other kinds of traffic flowing in contrary directions must pass at close range. After a time, it's purely an automatic reflex to move to the right so that both sides can pass. To move to the right is an unspoken contract: I move to my right and you move to your right and we don't bump into each other. When the other person refuses to honor the contract, our first impulse is to get all proprietary about "our" side of the side walk and the urge to defend "our" turf wells up.
The same thing often happens while driving. A driver signals wanting to change lanes and occupy the space in front of us, and we start to feel proprietary about that piece of turf as well, so we cut off that driver by moving up into "our" space and voilà -- road rage! What is it that makes us so anxious to defend our turf? Is it another gift from our past that's not needed so much today?
So here is the interesting thing that man taught me in our brief encounter: if we put our mind to it, we can retrain the instincts so that we flow like water around any obstacles that appear in our way. To get where going with the minimum of fuss is best accomplished by giving way rather than by defending our turf.
Since we happen to drive on the right hand side of the road by law, we allow this convention to bleed over into other aspects of life where other kinds of traffic flowing in contrary directions must pass at close range. After a time, it's purely an automatic reflex to move to the right so that both sides can pass. To move to the right is an unspoken contract: I move to my right and you move to your right and we don't bump into each other. When the other person refuses to honor the contract, our first impulse is to get all proprietary about "our" side of the side walk and the urge to defend "our" turf wells up.
The same thing often happens while driving. A driver signals wanting to change lanes and occupy the space in front of us, and we start to feel proprietary about that piece of turf as well, so we cut off that driver by moving up into "our" space and voilà -- road rage! What is it that makes us so anxious to defend our turf? Is it another gift from our past that's not needed so much today?
So here is the interesting thing that man taught me in our brief encounter: if we put our mind to it, we can retrain the instincts so that we flow like water around any obstacles that appear in our way. To get where going with the minimum of fuss is best accomplished by giving way rather than by defending our turf.
Comments
Just curious.