Having spent much of the past six years in the Boston, MA area, I’ve had to face a lot of acceptance issues when it comes to the traffic here. USA Today recently ranked the Boston metropolitan area as the tenth worst congested city in the nation, but sometimes I feel it should be even higher than that. Ironically though, the thing I have found most difficult to accept with the traffic here does not actually deal with the length of time it takes to get anywhere. Instead, what truly has been my biggest challenge here on the roads is dealing with the incredible amount of drivers who routinely get irritated and angry at other drivers.
Let me first say right off the bat that I’m definitely a slow driver, more so than not, these days. Some have even referred to me as a “Granny Driver” solely because I always operate my vehicle around the speed limit and keep several car lengths between the car in front of me and my own car. Unfortunately, I found out in the first year I was in this area how many people were the complete opposite of that. My first experience of this happened during a major storm that suddenly hit one afternoon around 2pm. It seemed as if everyone poured out of their jobs that day and headed home at the same time as the ice and snow came down very quickly. Every road, including the highways, almost came to a near standstill because of it. As I drove less than 5mph, my windshield wipers abruptly froze up and I couldn’t see anything. Rather than risk hitting someone, I stopped my car for a mere minute to remove the ice off my wipers. As a car slowly rolled past me while I took care of this, a man looked over at me and shouted some terrible obscenities and continued on. I was horrified at his gesture and anger that was directed at me but was soon to find out that there were many others in this area just like him.
I find it sad to say this but the Boston drivers, like the man from that snowstorm, have proudly created a nickname for themselves to describe the attitude they have here on the roads. You can see this nickname on too many bumpers of cars and you’ll even hear many people joke about it regularly on how the nickname fits them quite suitably. I honestly can’t say I know who started this nickname, but seeing people show great pride in describing themselves as “Massholes” on their bumpers or directly in person has appalled me.
Around this area, it’s extremely common to see those people demonstrate acts of road rage. I knew of one person who was cut off by a car while riding on his motorcycle one day. He followed that car to a stop light and proceeded to bash out that car’s windows with children sitting in the backseat watching in horror. I’ve known of many others who have gotten out of their cars and pulled another driver out of theirs only to pummel them in anger. Recently, a person I knew got so angry when someone cut them off that he threw coins out his car window hoping to damage the other person’s car.
On a less aggressive level, I’ve lost count of the number of times where I’ve been sitting at a light that just turns green and someone starts laying on their horn because I’m not moving forward fast enough. I’ve also been flipped off many times and had a number of headlights flash on and off at me when I’m driving, all because I’m not going fast enough for them. Then there’s even those who purposely speed up when you’re trying to merge in, just to cut you off and prevent you from doing so. What’s really sad to say about all of this is that I’m starting to see this ego based driving in many other cities now too. And the irony in all of these crazy driving behaviors is that most of the people doing it are just taking out their frustrations in life on someone else.
I’ve been a passenger quite a bit in vehicles where a driver has started yelling at a car in front of them just because that car isn’t driving the way their ego thinks it should be driving. That’s a very selfish and self-centered perspective to take on the roads but I’ve found it serves one purpose for a driver that does this. It prevents them from looking in the mirror at why they are getting so angry in the first place about something so trivial. What they don’t see is that it’s merely a distraction their ego creates to avoid looking at what’s really going on inside themselves. I know this because I’ve been there. While I never had any serious road rage based behaviors, I was once guilty of many of those less aggressive tactics. The only reason why I ever did those things on the road was that I didn’t really like myself or my life. Doing this unspiritual behavior regularly helped me to temporarily blame someone else for all the misery I had in my life.
Thankfully, I have an incredible amount more of patience today when I’m on the road. Having God at the center of my life has given me a different perspective on things, especially when driving. So when I see people being erratic now on the roads in ways that seem too slow or too fast or too something that my ego tries to tell me, I just pray for them and keep my distance. I’m a lot calmer now because of it and thankfully I don’t fit that nickname anymore that Boston drivers love to call themselves.
Look, I don’t know if you’re someone who routinely finds yourself getting angry or irritated at other drivers on the road or not. But if you are, then I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and have a good look at yourself in the rear-view mirror the next time you’re in the car and feeling this way. You see, that’s the person you’re really irritated and angry with, except your ego keeps keeps trying to tell you otherwise. Start focusing on releasing all that anger you have within and you may find yourself feeling a lot more calm and peaceful on the roads.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson