PARABLE OF THE TRAFFIC

by Mr. Mean-Spirited

Think of life as something like trying to walk across a highway. Got that in your mind? Traffic is moving along pretty heavy, but you still need to find a way to get to the other side of the freeway. Even when there is no crosswalk, even when there is no pedestrian causeway, you very existence depends on getting across that road. Vehicle after vehicle zooms past. You do not hold any animosity for the unknown drivers – all of them have their own particular places to go. You wait for the right moment to walk across the road.

All of a sudden, you notice a slight gap in vehicles. You realize that if you maintain a precise pace, you can just make it across. Not a second to spare. At just the right moment, you enter the roadway – after making your way across the first lane, there is no turning back. Moving vehicles are just inches away from your flesh. You’re committed to the plan you have chosen. You have to do this.

Then one car slows down. What the hell? You had expected the vehicle to maintain the same speed and to pass you by now. Now you have no way of knowing exactly what the driver might be intending: just to stop so that you might get hit by a moving vehicle in the lane beside him – or maybe he has merely reduced speed because he thinks some different traffic law applies. The sedan, you notice with some caution, has not completely stopped – just reduced velocity. You believe that the driver is just being some sort of a Good Samaritan – but he has now made it impossible for you to get to the other side.

Because of the operator’s unwelcome help, your very life is now in jeopardy. If only that other person had just minded his own business, you might have made it where you needed to go. Now you are stuck in between life-threatening vehicles – all because some bastard wanted to be nice. Kindness kills.