Want my space?

The other morning I was driving to work on a surface street, as I always do. A fellow in his car on my right awakened enough to realize that the next intersection was where he needed to turn left. He started to change lanes and THEN looked and realized that I was there, right next to him. He jerked back into his lane, flipped on his signal and proceeded to speed up until only the front half of his car was ahead of mine (the rear of his car ended at my passenger door) and then, regardless of the fact that I was still there, he moved over into a spot that a motorcycle wouldn't have fit in. I braked and let him in. I was a little startled that he was choosing to drive unsafely, but more than that I was curious about him rather than his actions.

Within a second after his lane change, he realized he was too close to the car in front of him and crammed on his brakes. To avoid rear-ending him, I executed a quick lane change into the lane he had vacated. As I came alongside him, I glanced over into his car because my curiousity was running rampant. The man was older, maybe 60ish. He had greying hair, a little overweight. But the most noticeable thing to me was that he was staring at me (instead of the road in front of him), gesturing wildly, his face was PURPLE from his anger and he was YELLING AT ME even though his windows were, even though MY windows were up and even though I couldn't hear him.

I shook my head in disbelief, raised my hands in a "what did I do?" gesture and continued my drive to work.

I guess he thought I was going to cut back in front of him, because I noticed he sped up to close the gap to the car in front of him to a mere few inches.

The situation bothered me. I felt so bad, I don't like seeing people get angry and certainly not at me. I really didn't understand what I had done to cause him to be so angry. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack over a simple lane change.

I replayed the scene in my head a couple of times and finally realized that it wasn't something I had done, it was just that I was where he wanted to be. There was no way for him to BE where I was unless he took some rude measures and infringed upon the space I needed for my car. Yet, even though I yielded the space to him, he STILL wasn't happy. There was nothing I could do to make him happy.

I was reminded, once again, that I cannot ever be responsible for someone else's happiness. Each person is responsible for their own happiness. The only thing I can do is pray for their peace, that whatever is causing them to be so angry about their life will be resolved. So, that's what I did this morning. I yielded my hurt feelings to God and prayed for that angry, angry man. I prayed that his day would get better.

The hurt spot inside my heart filled with peace. Even though it was the hardest thing to do, giving up that hurt feeling, the reward in doing so was returned three times over.