Tag Archives: Bombs

Rolling Cool

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I went for a ride on the Silver Comet recently. I was enjoying the day, and the ride, when I came up behind a group of three cyclists in my lane. I slowed. They were two men followed by a woman. She was maybe 2 or 3 wheel lengths behind the two men who were riding abreast. There was also a dog-walker. He was coming toward me on the grass. He and his pet were completely clear of what I could have used as the passing lane. The dog walker was giving me the right of way, but that front cyclist near the center line was riding like someone who was not paying attention, not just because he had his primary attention on talking to the man beside him, but he also had the small wavering movements of someone who didn’t have much of his secondary attention on his riding either.

After the dog walker passed the group, I picked my pace back up and called “Coming up on your left”. The woman thanked me loudly and I called passing again, to make sure the guy I was giving all the space heard me too. As he saw me pass, he began to yell the sarcastic, profane, name calling accusation that I had not called the pass. He was still yelling when I lost the ability to hear him.

I never respond in kind to the abuse of a stranger. It’s not just that I don’t want to be that person. It’s also that you never really want to know how far a person who’s acting out in anger will go. At that moment though, I was really in touch with those feelings that make people yell back and escalate things. I really wanted to give the guy the finger as I left him behind.

I make mistakes, more and bigger mistakes than I’d like, on and off the trail, but I had given this guy the kid gloves treatment, and anger over his abuse was roiling through me. I tried to calm it down, leave him behind in my thoughts as quickly as I had left him behind on the trail. I wanted to change my thoughts, so he didn’t stay camped out in my brain.

At first, all I managed was to blunt my feelings. I reminded myself that my anger hurt only myself. Then remembered the empathy meditation. When doing this in a more formal way, you are supposed to choose a few people, starting with an easy person, and then after a few specific people, expand it to all beings everywhere. Picking only the difficult person on this occasion (clueless raging guy of course), I repeated in my mind “May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe from harm. May you live with ease.” Instantly it took about 80% of my remaining negative feelings out of my body. It’s amazing how that works, but I still had negative thought every now and then for some time. It’s equally amazing how a stranger can get to you, and it doesn’t matter how wrong or factually incorrect they are. Words have impact, especially when delivered with rage.

Stuff like this isn’t the norm on the trail. People mostly come here to get away from stress and find their center, but it happens. A week or two earlier a walker mocked me for calling my pass. She did it in that ugly grating voice that comes from some kind of pain unrelated to the current interaction. I was sorely tempted to stop and tell her that calling a pass was for safety, not bragging. But, again, you never know how a person on the edge will react and the chances of positive outcome were low.

The Silver Comet Trail is not a loop. It’s a linear 60+ miles and growing. After I turned to go back to the car, I wondered if I would see angry man again. Then, I met another group of cyclists, this time facing me, traveling in the opposite lane. As they passed by, they greeted me with such smiles and enthusiasm it made me wonder, at first, if they thought they knew me. It took me a minute to fully take in the antithesis of my earlier experience and appreciate it, especially since I had been anticipating seeing the angry rude guy on the flip side, and wondering how that would go.

After fully adjusting my mood to the happier tone, there he was. The woman in the group was taking a picture in the direction of a trailside mass of kudzu. She was probably trying to photograph some bird or other pollinator (oh look, a butterfly!) because she was standing back with body language that said she was afraid of spooking her subject. The angry guy was standing behind her, in the middle of the path, on the center line, legs straddling the top tube with one wheel in one lane and one wheel in the other.

Of course he was!

I called “Passing on your left.” It wasn’t true. I was passing behind his back, but saying so could have been perceived as provocative, rather than merely accurate. He jerked, looked like he was going to say something, then didn’t, at least not anything audible to me. He didn’t move out of the way either, at least not while it made my passing safer.

I said the Empathy Meditation again.

Here’s the thing. What you say and do matters to everyone who sees and hears it. I have bad days too, and who knows what this guy was trying to get over. If you ever see me out there having a bad day, I sincerely hope it’s not on this level, and deepest apologies in advance. It’s okay to remind me, just like you were my granddaughter tugging at my clothing and helping to remember that the empathy meditation, is pretty effective. I hadn’t added some of the more detailed components in that last link until after I listened to 10% Happier by Dan Harris. It’s not actually a particularly instructional book, but I enjoyed it and managed to pick up a few tips regardless.

Take care.

See you on the trail, and have a glorious day.

Morning Bombs in Marietta and the Economy

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When I was in high school, my grandmother took me to Israel for Christmas. It was the experience of a lifetime in so many ways. One way is that it was the first time that I ever heard bombs. We were taking a tour near Gaza and I said, with no idea that I was right, “Hey, what do you think that is, bombs?”. The bombs were in the distance and there was never any danger to us, but I was visiting in a country where safety was never taken for granted, and, on a different level, I was never able to take that for granted again, either.

Bombs that I could hear were a a very real risk to somebody out there along the horizon. Later when I lived on a military base, there were bombing ranges and the windows rattled fairly frequently. I do know what real bombs actually sound like. So, when I say that Saturday morning I was awakened by the thought that I heard bombs, the idea wasn’t pulled from thin air, I had experience to lend validity to my interpretation of the noise. I ran downstairs to turn on the television and see if the news had anything to report. The most threatening report I could find was one on the Weather Channel about severe thunderstorms.

In those few minutes while I was satisfying myself that the risk was natural as opposed to man made, I was thinking through my immediate emergency plan. Irreplacables are on the list for Hurricanes, but, If there were bombs going off here in Marietta, sentimental things were not on the short list. The list was more survivalist. Weapons, tools, money and camping gear. Not everything that would fit in the car, but everything that I could reasonably gather in the 15 or so minutes I would allow myself to pack.

Since 9-11 there are many more civilians in the US who understand what I felt that day in Israel when I experienced war within earshot, some on a much more personal, life threatening or life changing level than I. Empathy for those people or for people who have never known anything but war sometimes helps us to cope with our own trials.

This is where I see the link to the economy because widespread fear related to our economic times is such an example. We may say that we feel shell shocked, but at the end of the day we know that the metaphor we use is, in fact, a reality for some. There have always been stories of people who live with war and have an unstoppable will to thrive as well as stories of people who seem to have everything to live for and no will to live. Today we are much more likely to know that person rather than simply to have heard about them.

Like my emergency plans for natural or political disaster, I have plans for financial disaster. The the natural and political disaster plans have had no big changes or revelations over the years. The plan that was good for a given situation 20 years ago is still pretty good now. For my financial plans there have been fundamental changes. I feel a bit betrayed because the rules we live by have been broken. All my hard work to make responsible financial decisions only means that I don’t qualify for assistance, only for a piece of the tax burden that will remain after all is said and done.

We say that financial institutions are too large to be allowed to fail while encouraging them to buy each other, creating still larger institutions. Each party blames the other and seems to think the situation can be understood in the context of a zero sum game.

The people who behaved responsibly while others were caught up in the demise of our economy are seeing a retirement that looks markedly different than the one they prepared for responsibly over a lifetime. All of the hyperbole, blame game and partisanship aside, we are truly rewarding bad behavior and preserving the institutions that foster the pursuit a quick buck at the cost of tomorrow, at the cost of our children’s future.

What is my financial plan now? Well, until I figure that out, hugs help, and I try very hard to remember that if I smile it is harder for people to see the circles underneath my eyes…and I am thankful that the thunder on the horizon was nothing more.