The other day I was doing my usual, sitting in my car wasting precious time stuck in the never-ending daily commute from work, struggling like everybody else to make it to the finish line, that being the lovely home front.
As with most days, it was a steady stream of cars stretching far behind and before me, all of us headed in the same direction, all inching slowly towards the exit to the highway that seemed seriously eons away.
Stop and start, stop and start. It’s a game that I do not enjoy playing.
“I can’t do this, I can’t do this”, I muttered again and again. I could feel the tension as it tightened my back.
As we inched along, I tried to stop my restlessness, tried not to think about the minutes I wasted everyday stuck in traffic to and from work. I turned up the radio, sang along with a couple of songs, and forced my fingers to stop drumming impatiently on the top of the steering wheel. Just ahead, to the right of my car, on the very edge of the sidewalk, I spotted an older gentleman standing with a young child in a stroller beside him. They were separated from the traffic by a safety barricade similar to the construction on a small bridge. The child, a little girl, sat busily working away on a red soother in her mouth as she watched the slow-moving traffic with fascination. The gentleman, obviously her grandfather, pointed first one way then the other, and she turned to obediently to follow his gaze, the soother giving her an open mouthed ‘Oh’ expression on her little face. You could tell without a doubt that she thought she was at the most exciting event of her day!
Every few minutes they waved at each car that passed them by. Some in the car waved, some did not. I leaned forward, eager now not for speed to reach the highway, but for the chance to draw closer to this little audience of two. For a moment, I felt part of not the dirty grind of commuting, but of the flash and fun of an impromptu parade.
I was in a parade! I sat taller, I relaxed and smiled, and I waved like a mad woman at the crowd of two waving enthusiastically from the sidewalk.
And there it was, I’d viewed the line of traffic as the necessary evil of my work day, while another saw only a parade of lights and colours. It’s all in how you look at life, isn’t it?
