On this manic Monday morning, as we were all rushing around to drop off our kids at school and get to our respective offices, I had the most horrifying experience, yet a very educational one too.
As I took the bend in front of Thurston College this dash driver in a 4-wheel-drive (surprise surprise!!) all most ramped into me, purely because he didn’t know how to keep to his side of the lane. Fortunately I anticipated the brainless moran and managed to brake in time.
But at that same instance my 2.5 year old son had manage to pull his seat belt out at the back (which he has started to do as of late and hopefully after this incident will remind him not to) making him stumble to the floor and bruising his thigh on the metal railing behind my seat.
The moran (which is the best way to describe him) had sped off by then and I saw him cutting other fellow drivers off, along the way.
I had to pull over attend to my hysterical son and then managed to get them to school on time.
During my driver to work its fare to say that I was mentally imagining all the outrageous things I would have done to the moran if I was ever to come face-to-face with him… but that’s the thing, I’m not going to come face-to-face with him and my dramatic imagination is not going to allow be to reach out my hand to give him the slap he rightfully deserves.
In fact, my stress and anger had made me a far greater looser than the incident had. After all, will this moran even know what he had done? The consequences of his actions? Sadly, not.
I forced myself to let it go and let me start off this beautiful Monday morning on a positive note in this great city of ours.
But the message is this. No matter what we do and how we go about our daily lives we all unintentionally hurt or effect people around us. It’s simply unavoidable and happens every day.
It can happen over an innocent conversation with a co-work and just a phase you say being interpreted wrongly. By careless gestures we make to our family members, and certain habits that we have developed which may irritate others around us. Or in this case selfish driving that I truly believe is unintentional.
The question is, can we AVOID or LIMIT the hurt and anxiety we cause to those around us, whether they are our loved ones or strangers, by purely practicing the art of being aware? Being a little less selfish and a lot more thoughtful?
To every horror story on the streets of Colombo there are a hundreds of heroic stories of strangers coming to the rescue of other strangers.
If you have any such stories to share, please do drop me a note. I would love to hear from you and I’m sure others would too.
Hope you all have a pleasant week!
