Driving in LA

It is sad that culture and ways of living can sometimes create in us a lack of empathy without even really meaning to.

The more I drive LA traffic, the more frustrated I get by my “annoyance” over an accident as opposed to feeling awful that there is an accident in the first place.  Accidents become hindrances to getting places on time or mean more sitting and less moving.  Yet, accidents are also often enveloped in loss, tragedy, pain, hardship, turmoil, and the list goes on.  Even accidents that don’t involve any physical human harm, can be an incredibly harmful thing to a person’s finances. 

All that is behind a car itself, is incredibly difficult.  There is a lot invested in our transportation.  The absence of it could mean an inability to go to work, an inability to get where we need to go.  To purchase a whole new car, for most people, is not just an atrocity, it is an impossibility.

I am writing this as I am actually sitting behind the shining red and yellow lights of an accident on the onramp to the 605 from the 60.  Ahead of me is incredibly potential despair, and my first thought was the difficulty I was going to experience getting home in time to get my 7 and half hours of sleep before work.  The fact that these are my first thoughts and not last, make me very sad. 

Who cares if I get home on time.  Who cares if I get to work on time.  Who cares if I am late. 

I must hope and hope and hope that what is ahead of me is not something awful.  I hope and sometimes pray that the potential tragedy is more lights and attention then is actually possible.  I would sit in traffic until they end of the world if it meant a life or a few lives would be saved.

I can deal with traffic.  I can’t deal with a lost life.