Monday, November 20, 2017

The Kindness of Not Honking

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am going to propose a crazy idea, so crazy that I hope you might go along with it and encourage others to do so, too.  As I drive around my community, I hear what feels like the endless honking of car horns – or beeping, as we used to call it.  As far as I can tell, this is not honking the horn to avoid an accident – which, of course, makes sense.  This is honking to make the person in the car in front of you move faster or turn faster.  It seems to be honking based on impatience.  If you even stop for a moment to think about it, honking does not help matters at all.  You only succeed in startling or annoying the other person.  So my crazy idea is this:  What if we decide – in the spirit of Thanksgiving and Christmas – not to honk at others in traffic unless it is to avoid an accident?  When someone is not moving as fast as we would like, we can instead take a breath, count one blessing or say a quick prayer – all of which can only help us and are more in keeping with the season.

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