10.14.10 Lessons learned from a traffic jam

What is it about traffic that makes people go crazy...me in particular?  I was having a great, productive day and a smooth drive home from my meeting in Salt Lake this afternoon.  I was thinking about how much I love autumn and listening to feel good music when I suddenly hit horrible traffic on I-15 around American Fork.  It was stop and go for about 3 miles due to construction.  Twenty minutes later my whole mood had transformed.  Before the traffic I was looking forward to getting back to my office to help a woman prepare her taxes.  After 15 minutes I was cursing her for procrastinating until the last possible minute.  Earlier I was enjoying "The Only Living Boy in New York," and thinking how lucky I was to have a wonderful husband.  Minutes later I was yelling at the woman driving the Cougar in front of me and yelling at my new phone that apparently has a very limited texting dictionary (on a side note--I am usually very strict about never texting on the freeway, but we were literally stopped most of the time).

I was absolutely infuriated by the time I got off the center street exit in Provo.  And then this came into my mind:

"When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is  some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed.  And the excuse  that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself.  Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular  acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated.  On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly.  But the suddenness does not create the rats:  it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man:  it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.  The rats are  always there  in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity


I have rats in my cellar--lots and lots of rats.  And so I can't blame the traffic, the construction, or that woman in the Cougar who obviously has no idea how to drive.  I only have myself and my rats to blame.  So, as is often the case, it looks like I need to spend more time and effort on developing the godly attributes of patience and charity and less time on things of lesser importance.

And just because I really do love autumn, here's a photo from a couple of years ago.