I was running late driving the "littles" to school this morning. The kids had won the majority of the negotiations since about 7 am, and although they were supposed to be at school by 8, it was 8:11 and I was still 3 traffic signals away. The kids were oblivious to being late or early, giggling, laughing, and occasionally screaming from their car seats. Three of them buckled side by side by side in the middle row of our SUV. Leo on the right, Jordan the youngest in the middle and Ella on the left behind the driver, which was me this morning. I kept my rear view mirror tilted down so I could see the kids forfeiting my view of cars behind me, but I figured that was safer, because having an idea of what the children were doing at any given time was a necessary feature of safe driving I thought.
Anyway, this particular morning I hit every yellow light. It was not a great urgency in my mind or my life to get the children to school exactly on time every day, I am too old for that neurosis, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the teacher or other students by interrupting them once class had begun, so I was hustling. My wife and older children would still say I drive slow, even when I am hustling, they call me "Mr. Fossil". I am fine with that, safety is more important that on time arrival in my mind. I have concluded that getting somewhere on time in life has become more a product of leaving early enough, not racing traffic and competing with other drivers to shorten my journey.
The last three lights that turned yellow as I approached them caught my attention. How could I get 6 yellows in a row! I ran the first 3, I would have argued they were stale yellow, but the next two were straight out red. In fact the lady in the Volvo who had to wait for me to clear past her before she proceeded through her green light gave me an ugly look like "what are you doing?" and I just waved. She was actually right, why put my kids in danger for an extra 30 seconds? That’s what I had done. I felt stupid for such a bad choice.
I dropped the kids off, walking them into class because they were late. They attend a great school and the teachers and other students smiled and welcomed them as if there had been no offense perpetrated. And all was well. I kissed and hugged each of them, and then they wanted a group hug, which is fine with me. I waved through the window as I walked back to the SUV.
Driving home I went extra slow, not as a penance for my earlier transgression, but just because that was the kind of mood I was in. I came up to every traffic light I had just traveled though in one direction and this time they were all red. Every single one of them. After the first 2 lights turned red as I was 200 yards away, I thought "no way they can all be red?" but sure enough, I was 6 for 6 on red lights. That made me curious.
Was there a plot against me and green lights this morning? Just me? Then I remembered from my commercial real estate days and working with developers and land planners and traffic engineers that traffic lights are synchronized by civil engineers to enhance the flow of traffic during the day. The duration of a green light, the length of a yellow light and the frequency of a red light are all timed together so that traffic, all traffic, flows smoothly through the roadway system. No one had set those timers against me that morning. In fact, the timers and been set way in advance to help me, and everyone else on the road, to have a safe and efficient commute to wherever we were going.
Isn’t that like life? I thought. There is a designer of the flow and the synchronicity of things in the world, and how often we fail to realize it, respect it, or take that into account. Those lights weren’t set to impede me, although I could have falsely concluded that based on the mornings experience. But I am old enough to know better, and should know better. It was one of those mornings, when all the lights were red. And that’s OK. It happens. Probably won’t happen tomorrow, but if it does, I can chuckle at it and wonder when my day will come when all the lights are green. The problem is that when they are all green, or mostly green, we don’t even realize it, we just rush through them as if we were entitled to the world yielding to our right of way when we pull up to an intersection.
I made it home plus or minus 3 minutes on time either way. Everyone was safe and sound. I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and sat down to my computer to get some work done. It had been a lovely morning so far, the laughter of the kids, and the little thought journey about the synchronicity of the world that I had taken, and it wasn’t even 8:30 AM. This was a good day so far.
Amen and amen