Not long ago I posted about anger, one of the great human emotions. As a dog owner, I’m tempted to think that dogs get angry, but to be honest I’m not sure that’s true. Non-human animals get mad and frustrated, but it’s only our own benighted species that really gets angry in lots of different ways, with intensity and depth and nuance. Dogs get ticked off, sure. But angry? No, that’s a human thing.

Recently I’ve found myself thinking about road rage. Sometimes I experience it myself: someone cuts me off, and all I want to do is lash out. That _________! What an _________! How normal it is to feel enraged by such a simple problem: you’re driving along, doing your thing, having a good day, and bam! Someone cuts you off. Ugh!

Road rage captures my interest because it’s a near-perfect example of anger–anger in its purest form. Something is in my way, so I’m mad. Furious, even. It’s easy to think that my anger is about that guy in front of me, you know, him, the one who cut me off. It’s his fault I’m sitting here in my car, losing it, freaking out, wanting to take him down, teach him a lesson! It’s his fault!

Except it isn’t. As understandable as road rage is–and, true confessions, I’ve experienced it, I’ve struggled with it!–it’s not about the other guy. It’s not about the person who cut you off. I hate to say it, but it’s about you. It’s about me. When people get mad, often enough there’s a good reason: someone got in your way, or someone insulted you, or someone disrespected you, or someone cut you off. How dare they?! But your anger is all your own.

Think of it this way: let’s say you, me, and the Dalai Lama are driving down the road. (It’s a three-lane highway!) Someone is driving aggressively, and they cut all of us off. You and me, we go crazy. We swear, we curse, we make rude gestures, we just lose it in our rage against this jerk who cut us off. And the Dalai Lama drives along, smiling serenely. If you and I notice this, let’s be honest, we might start getting upset with him too, right? What’s with him, anyway? Doesn’t he know he just got cut off?!

And even if we give him a break, even if we say, “Oh, well, he’s the Dalai Lama, of course he’s fine, of course he’s calm and content!” it might not occur to us that he isn’t doing anything special. He doesn’t have access to some sort of insight or truth that eludes us. Sure, he’s (maybe) further along than we are in his spiritual journey. He’s had more time and more support to develop a rich spiritual life. But the truth is, we too can respond like him to the all-too-common experience of being cut off in traffic. We too could let go of the suffering that so easily overtakes us in times like this.

A friend of mine who studied Buddhism told me that his favorite bumper sticker is not the one we usually see–”Mean People Suck”–it’s the one that says, “Mean People Are Suffering.” What the Dalai Lama knows (and we know too–though it’s easy to forget) is that the jerk who just cut us off is out of tune, discordant, troubled, and suffering. He (or she) is a person who has lost touch with her better self, her wise self, her spiritual self. And when that person’s problems intersect with my car, my frazzled day, and my own suffering, road rage ensues.

Most times, when the cut-off happens, and in the minutes that follow, I’m not going to remember all of this. But in other moments–moments of calm and quiet, moments of reflection–it’s a good idea to remember that the people who drive us crazy, the people who cut us off, are suffering. And if I let it happen, I can take on that suffering. I can let it infect me. I can let it ruin my drive, my afternoon, even my whole day.

Or…not!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Being Your Best Self, Feeling Mad, Sad, or Afraid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.