When I have free time or when I am stressed or just emotionally bound up I find that doing crafts helps me center. It gives me a chance to invoke the creative part of my brain. Tonight I chose to make a new set of prayer beads. So I hopped in my car and went to Michael’s (it is a craft place) and on the way home saw a wreck at the top of Cherry Road keeping me from turning left. I ended up having to go through the light and find a parallel street to run south below cherry and cross over Rhoads. The first street I turned into was shaped like a U, it spit me right out back on Park so I had to pass the wreck again, this time slowing down to get a good look, and take a right on Fair Meadow, which spits me out right below the Grad school.
The story is not the important part of my post, what is important is what went through my mind, “Damn, this is going to slow me down.” Well you might raise a lot of questions, but it was simply the truth. Now I suppose different people will find different problems with that phrase, there is a problem with that phrase though you may not agree with me on it.
That phrase ignores the fact that the people in the wreck are human beings whose lives will be forever changed because of this incident. There were three cars in this wreck, and one of which was very thoroughly crushed against a light post. I wonder if the people in the wreck walked away?
It is easy to state simply that people need to be more careful drivers, but that doesn’t involve everyone in the accident most of the time, and even if it did, will this event effect their lives any less? I listen to the radio during rush hour, especially during the rain, because a lot of delays are from wrecks. I will listen to the radio then adjust my route if I can, if I cannot I sit in traffic complaining that “this must have happened because they knew I was coming, this must only happen when I take this road.”
By centralizing my importance in the world, being the sun around which it revolves, the people around me are constructed only for my service. Think of it this way. There is a world, not unlike the Truman show, where all the people are made in light of me. They function and act in one manner when I am around, and are non-existent when I am not. As a figment of one great mind that fears being alone, he has created a world around himself and a delusion that goes with it. The wreck then being a function of a higher brained individual who, if it is not me, for his fantasy to continue must have my schedule thrown off for some reason, and that is just not acceptable, so if it is you, stop it.
Then, there is the idea that there are a bunch of omnipotent beings watching me for study or laugh, somewhat like the movie Darkcity. This is a negative form of the reality.
Then there is the other option. Where the world doesn’t revolve around me, traffic is just traffic, and the people that got hurt in that accident are currently in a more difficult situation than me so I need to get over it. I have stopped traffic because of a wreck I caused, and the last thing I wanted to feel was embarrassment because people were pissed I wrecked their night. I am not the center of the world, so I seek to find my true size, so that I can associate with other mere mortals like myself.
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