The Red Light

It took me a few seconds to write off a stranger as a jerk.

It’s Monday afternoon at 5 pm and I’m feeling good. I just got a pedicure and both windows are down, because 72° and sunny doesn’t happen often in the PNW.

I’m driving home and trying to change lanes. I keep checking my blind spot but he won’t budge. Fine. I file him under jerk and move on.

We end up at a stoplight next to each other anyway, and I turn down my music to be polite, even though I’ve decided he doesn’t deserve that courtesy.

I glance over and see an older woman in the front passenger seat. It looks like she wants to say something.

Here it comes. He wouldn’t let me in and now she’s going to back him up.

My immediate thought, “Ugh... don’t talk to me.”

Then she says, with a contagious smile, “I like your car!”

“Me too, it’s fun to drive.”

And then she says, “You look good in it.”

I think about how long it took me to decide they were against me. Not long. A few seconds, over a lane change.

I interpreted the driver’s behavior as a message. I’m more important than you. I’m not making room for you. But if I take a couple of seconds, I realize he almost certainly never saw me. A blind spot, a song he liked, his mind down the road. Not malice. Just a guy driving his car, maybe driving his mother around.

There’s an old rule for exactly this.

Never attribute to malice what carelessness explains just as well.

It’s Hanlon’s Razor, and I broke it. It was faster and easier to assume he meant it than to wonder if he just wasn’t paying attention.

That’s the part that stayed with me. Not that I was in the wrong, but that I judged so fast and let it irritate me. I was feeling so good, and it almost cost me that.

How many strangers have I written off in the time it takes a light to change?

I’ll never know. That’s the trouble with a snap verdict. It feels like the truth, but it’s just the story I told myself because it was easier than withholding judgment.

Where are you doing this? It’s so automatic, it’s easy not to notice.

Here’s your challenge: Shift to neutral. Assume carelessness, not malice. And if you don’t know the person, be comfortable not having an opinion at all.

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. When we are hindered or disturbed or grieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves. – Epictetus