From Mad to Sad: A Perspective Change

Sitting in traffic...there, I have successfully put a bad thought in your head. If you like traffic, good for you. You have successfully turned a mostly negative situation into something fun, but for most of us, traffic is frustrating. You're stuck in your car, not moving at all, surrounded on all sides, with only the radio to distract you from realizing that you're going to miss the miss the season finale of The Bachelor. Not seeing whats up front causing the traffic can be the most rage inducing part though, because you would need the senses of Superman himself to figure out how long you'll be sitting there. Sitting in traffic is hard for an impatient person like me, as the other night I was in it for quite a while. I sat there cursing like a pirate in my sinking ship for 30 minutes before turning the sail around to take a longer alternate route back to the uncharted island I call home. Only then did I realize how lucky I should consider myself to be to deal with the traffic.

A part of the populated road I was taking was driving on was closed due to a crash. A crash so devastating that it shook the entire town forced people to do something that only a tragedy seems to be capable of doing nowadays; count your blessings. a family of four, two adults and two small children were killed in the crash, as well an older lady who had just successfully completed her final round of chemo. In this small town that was home to this devastation, had to also be home to at least a handful of people who knew someone involved in the crash. A former graduate from my high school who I once knew was amongst those killed in the crash. Word quickly spread to my friends near and far. Those friends who were far off in college elsewhere were worried sick upon the possibility that the crash could have involved one of us who still lived nearby. 

It takes a tragedy to make us count our blessings and realize whats important. It takes something like this to realize that the things that annoy us, are blessings themselves compared to what are tragic events. It makes us realize that getting mad at something might not be worth it, when you realize that whatever or whoever is making you mad has their own story, and that story may have a bad ending.