– Rudyard Kipling
A long time ago, I dated a man who had a habit that really stressed me out. If we were driving and he felt the car behind us was following too closely, he would get angry and start messing with that driver by slowing down; then when they would try to pass him, he would speed up. Eventually, he would let them get ahead of him, at which point he would start tailgating them to try to teach them a lesson. As you might imagine, this led to a lot of angry, stressful driving experiences. It was during one such drive that I started looking for good reasons why those other drivers may be driving that way in order to try to talk him out of his road rage: maybe they were racing a child to the hospital, or they were late for work and were afraid of being fired, or they were racing to help someone in need. Though that relationship eventually ended, it did change me in some positive ways. I still assume that people who are behaving badly may have a good reason for doing so. It may or may not be true, but when I ‘pull over’ to get out of their way, I enjoy a much more peaceful, pleasant drive through life.