...a lace-edged navy blue tank top, a brown furry vest, and brown and tan diagonally striped windbreaker.
I drove up to Vashon Island, WA on Friday to attend a Saturday workshop. I have this habit when I drive the freeway to look over whenever someone is passing me, just to acknowledge them. Sometimes, I smile.
Not long into the drive up, I looked over at someone passing me, and he flipped me off. I hadn't cut him off or slowed him down. The only thing I can figure is that he didn't like some of our bumper stickers: maybe Darth W. Bush or Impeach Bush or the like.
For several miles, I wrestled with what to do with this occurrence. When it happened, a sort of shock went through me. I am the sort of person who first wonders what I did to draw this sort of reaction; then I find some outrage in me, though I also feel somewhat fearful of a person who would do such a thing. None of these reactions felt right or comfortable.
About ten minutes later, I pulled into a rest area. On my way to the restroom, I noticed two men in their early 60's who'd clearly stopped for a cigarette and to stretch their legs. They had close-cropped hair and were dressed in clean jeans and wind breakers. As I came back to my car, the two men approached me. "Those are quite the stickers," the bespectacled one said. "There's no question who you are for" (here, I think he referred to the no less than four bumper stickers we have for Steve Novick, a good college friend of mine who ran for the Senate a couple years back). I explained to them about Novick. Turns out they were from Canada, were a couple, were driving back up to Canada from Palm Springs (who comes from Canada to Palm Springs in early October?!), thought Americans were a little wacky, especially about the health care situation.
All of this happened as I drove to Vashon Island and listened to Eckhart Tolle's The New Earth on CD in the car. So here is what I think: when the guy flipped me off, he was treating me like the Other. My discomfort came from feeling invited to polarize the two of us. In his view, he was right and I was offensively wrong. In such a dynamic, to make myself feel better, I had to make him outrageous and wrong for behaving the way he did and make myself wronged and, thus, right. Yet I wanted us both to belong. Those two men reminded me I did belong. We see you and we're okay with what we see. Somehow, this reminder that I was not cast out settled me enough to see that I just didn't like the dynamic the other guy set up by flipping me off. It felt better to feel badly that he saw the world that way, but to realize it had nothing really to do with me.
The workshop was about becoming more of who we are. I am someone who can get derailed by worrying how others see me. When I'm on my tracks, I love people; I want us all to belong. I want to remember that more.
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