I was walking with a friend and we paused at an intersection. A van was turning left, and in so doing blocked the eight or nine cars behind her. One of those drivers was angry. He leaned on his horn as if he was alerting the whole town of a fire, which did nothing to get him where he was going. When the van finally had a chance to turn safely, the light was red, and one car slipped through. But the impatient driver was taking the law into his own hands and swerved around the stopped vehicle in front, speeding through the intersection. The one my friend and I were crossing. 

It was a dramatic moment in an otherwise peaceful stroll, and I wondered whether the driver even saw us in the crosswalk. My friend was more benevolent and assumed he was headed to the hospital. 

Being an observer while someone's self absorption eclipses anyone else around is stunning. If only because I do it, with less fatal repurcussions. The length of his delay was less than a minute, and yet his impatience exploded to the point that he gunned the gas across the path of two pedestrians. 

The other day I was grumbling because it was another person's turn to empty the dishwasher, but here I was doing it. Then I glanced at the clock. The number of seconds it robbed me of was less than sixty. Is such a pause in my oh so important agenda really worth getting huffy about?

My daughter drove me home from the city this week, and her daughter sat in the back. Because of traffic, the trip was double the usual length, but Olly held it as more time to be curious. She noticed the clouds, which were shifting, the billboards which were interesting even to someone not yet reading. The songs on the playlist, the elephant she had brought with her, the raindrops dancing on her window were all platforms for wonder. Since the power to raise and lower her window was at her fingertips she enjoyed that too. Even the overhead light was within her reach if she poked her umbrella just so. 

"Unless you are converted and become as little children you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."Matthew 18