As I approached a busy and chaotic intersection of roads late yesterday afternoon, an AYMPUT (my acronym for an Aggressive Young Man in a Pick Up Truck) traveling in the opposite direction decided he ought not have to wait in the traffic he was a part of. Said AYMPUT veered into my lane (into oncoming traffic!!!), hit the gas coming straight towards me, and expected me to slam on my brakes (which I did, of course.) AYMPUT then passed one car, forced his way back into his own lane in front of that vehicle, compelling that driver to hit her own brakes hard, then drove off into the sunset (he actually was heading west at sunset.)
To be honest, my brake stomping was not done with equanimity. As the sun-glassed, intense-looking AYMPUT came at me full-speed, I shouted some expletives into the air. I took the name of my primary teacher in vain. I combined the name of my teacher (who I love) with those expletives, which The Teacher certainly does not deserve. Basically, I returned anger for anger out of fear. I still have my own work to do for sure.
AYMPUTs, like anyone who is bullying, do anger me; perhaps justly so. Their energy is an unpredictable and dangerous combination of fury, speed, horse-power, and steel. If you have driven at all in the last decade you have almost certainly encountered an AYMPUT (who I admit come in all ages and genders and drive all makes and models.) They drive as if they are winning at something through speed and intimidation. It is unsettling to elders in Prius’s (like me) for sure.
All that said, after my heart returned to a regular rhythm and I made my apologies to heaven for my outburst, I did imagine a wonderful, whimsical, magical-thinking, bit of justice for AYMPUTs and their ilk; one that made me smile … I imagined a reality in which every time anyone intentionally practiced an act of aggressive, reckless, endangerment on any road, their vehicle would (poof) immediately become a ball of downy feathers that would waft away in the wind leaving the driver sitting safely, if in befuddlement, and with a lesson learned, on a grassy space on the side of the road.
Yet, since my feather-solution cannot be so, and magical-thinking is nothing but a temptation away from our own responsibility for the way things are, might we finally admit that this society has let our people down in more ways than we can count. Once we own that, might we then seek ways to create a human-world in which our natural warrior energy is directed towards self-awareness, awareness of our place in the All, in eyes that see, and the power of nonviolence?
Indigenous people still hold much wisdom about such things. So do many religions. We ought pay attention and learn. We ought remember the import of rituals of passage, of formative lives. That seems something much more tangible than feathers.
Courage my dears. Love one another. Make love real.
