Traffic
“Isn't
it funny how day to day nothing changes, but when you look back,
everything is different.”
C.S. Lewis
Something I've noticed
lately is a dramatic increase in traffic. I'm sure this didn't happen
overnight, but I am suddenly awake to it. It seems as though everyone
is on the road all the time. Initially, I thought it had to do with
holiday shopping—I cursed our materialistic society and ranted
about bad manners (as though mine were stellar) at a season when
charity and love of neighbor should be the guiding light. I'm
high-minded when it suits me. Cars zigging and zagging from lane to
lane, blowing their horns at slower moving folks like me provided
fuel for my judgmental fires.
But the holidays are over
and it hasn't stopped. The traffic is still much heavier than it has
ever been. Every time I go out now, I am reminded of my mother
in her latter days. She lived in a little town in North Carolina, of
maybe 10,000 people. There was hardly any traffic in comparison to
Birmingham, or God forbid, Atlanta. But Mother would exclaim with
great disgust, “Where did all these people come from!” as though
they had no right to be there. As though they had just popped out of
the ground like mushrooms—interlopers in her town!
Change happens slowly in
a measured way. It piles up until we notice. Then we wonder when it
happened without our knowledge or permission. There are 7.5-billion
human beings on this planet right now. You can go to the world meters
website, and watch as the births pile up and dramatically outpace
deaths. By 2050, that number will climb to 9.8-billion people. So,
yes, there is more traffic—especially in America where everyone and
their brothers, sisters, children, grannies and every member of their
extended family has a private car—sometimes more than one.
As change happens, we are
challenged to adjust, to adapt. It will be interesting to see how we
cope with this growth—will we go back to small, walk-able communities? Will we forge ahead with packing people into cities as
the countryside is swallowed up? Do we have enough foresight to
consider what will happen to people who cannot afford to make these
transitions? How might we provide for them? Will we provide for them?
We may not think that
traffic and housing are spiritual questions that require spiritual
answers, but our morality, our ethics are already being tested by the
incivility of people toward one another—the blowing horns, the road
rage, the massive demonstrations, the level of anger and derision.
These are, to a large extent, problems of overcrowding, of privilege
and poverty. These are ancient questions that will need modern
answers. Everything changes, and yet remains the same.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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