But things finally seemed to be trending towards health. The fevers, finally faded. The discomfort, largely banished. So we invited Mom to our standing Friday British Baking Show watch gathering with my father-in-law, and I was going to get her. It felt good getting into the car, opening the sunroof and rolling down the windows, and putting on some chill music. Motoring along those deeply familiar roads, I bathed in the goodness of some relaxing playlists and the pleasure of feeling the breeze under a perfectly cloud-speckled late afternoon sky. I sang along to them, as I often do.
I came to a stop at the intersection of Graham road and Route 50. It was a Friday at five thirty, so there was traffic. It's a long long light, so I leaned back, peered up at the blue sky through the sunroof, and sighed.
I was just meditating on how lovely it all felt when the shouting began.
"JESUS CHRIST!"
From behind me and to my right, a man's voice raised and harsh.
"JEEEESUS CHRIST!"
Someone out there on a beautiful day, windows open, yelling his fourth commandment violation at the world.
Was it road rage? Just a crazy person? I couldn't tell. I couldn't see the car or the driver in my mirror, just the Lord's name taken in vain again and again in a harsh and dissonant tone.
My reverie disrupted, I was a little annoyed. Why was this man so angry? The traffic was what it was. No-one was blocking traffic, or failing to turn when they should be turning. I couldn't see any reason anyone would be yelling, but it felt somehow part of the bitter zeitgeist of the day.
Because we barely seem to need reasons to be yelling. We're so reactive, so quick to find fault, quick to anger, quick to violence. Human beings have always been like that, of course, but it feels so amplified now, as provocateurs and professional agitators are supercharged by corporate algorithms designed to keep us addicted to being always upset, all the time.
That’s stirred the bubbling cauldron of political violence and the din of our endless shouting and finger-pointing, and for the umpteenth time in human history, a people seem drifting closer to a familiar psychosis.
It feels a dark path we've set ourselves down, so hooked on a poisonous cocktail of dopamine, adrenaline, and cortisol that we'd rather blow it all up than find a better path. We seem so lost.
But there is always a better path. As far as we flee into our personalized bespoke darknesses, there is always a way out, if we’re willing to take it. If we're willing to accept that we're lost, and that we're so often wrong, and that no amount of pride and bile will make things better. If we're willing to understand, and to act on that understanding, there is always hope.
As I marvelled at the amount of anger in the world, the lane to my right opened up a bit, and the voice grew louder. I thought about rolling up my windows, but I did not. I wanted to hear the voice clearly, and see who it was that just couldn’t seem to stop shouting.
As a battered Nissan Altima pulled alongside, windows down, I saw it was driven a middle aged man. He wore black plastic glasses, and looked to be either Afrocaribbean or Latino or some admixture thereof. He was, given the ruckus he was producing, surprisingly calm. JEEESUS CHRIST, he croaked, but then he gargled, laa laa laaa mmm mmm laaaa laaaa, and I realized that he wasn’t yelling at all.
Because there was music coming from the car, too, an old Christian contemporary song I kinda faintly remembered. He was singing very loudly to a song whose lyrics he didn’t totally remember.
Was he singing well? No. O Sweet Lord Jesus he was not. But what he lacked in natural talent, tone, and training he was making up for with enthusiasm and volume. Whenever he’d hit the chorus, he’d shout it at the top of his lungs.
That was all I had been hearing. It made me laugh.
We can always, all of us, be wrong. We do need to remember that.
That was all I had been hearing. It made me laugh.
We can always, all of us, be wrong. We do need to remember that.