The Compassion Files: Just when you think you are starting to get pure....

[Tobin S.]

I'm a trucker. In trucking you often deal with people when they are at their worst. It's hard to keep your cool out there on the road sometimes. I experience people doing aggressive, ignorant, and stupid things every day I'm out there. I know the best way to handle it all. You learn to expect stuff like that out there so when it happens you aren't really caught off guard and you can avoid knee-jerk reactions that could lead to a lot more trouble. But it doesn't always work out that way...

I had a wonderful and moving dream the other night. I won't go into that because that's not the purpose of this post. But I started crying toward the end of the dream the tears of someone who has received salvation. I woke up crying and cried for about 15 minutes. There was this dull wrenching pain right in the middle of my chest and it's like all of the tears were coming from there. I rarely cry and I've never cried that way or felt that way when I've cried before.

I took all of that as a sign of spiritual awakening. Then I dutifully marched off to work to hit the road.

I was driving on the interstate and I had just come out of a large city with a lot of traffic. The highway narrowed down to two lanes going one way. I looked up ahead and there was a tractor-trailer on the shoulder of the road. I looked to my left as I approached the semi to see if I could move over, but there was too much traffic. I was doing about 65 mph. I looked back ahead and the trucker on the shoulder decided to come out into my lane. It was everything I could do to get stopped and avoid a terrible collision. We're talking black streaks and a trail of smoke down the highway. I'm lucky no one rear-ended me. I was fortunate that I was loaded lightly or I would have tagged him.

I was shaking with anger and fear. Guess what? Knee-jerk! I got on the CB radio and said, "That was some stupid shit right there." The other driver did not respond. He might not have had his CB on. I don't know. Then I continued down the road.

Yeah, I guess there are worse responses than that. That would have been enough to throw some people into a retaliatory rage. But I had just been thinking that I was this loving being of light and peace earlier that morning and there I was calling another human stupid.

However....lesson learned. I won't react the same way next time. And there will be many next times. It's in the nature of the work.