Lessons:
In 1989 I obtained my driver’s license. And then then partway through the next year, I became a full-time bicycle commuter.
These two changes – the driver’s license and the vastly expanded understanding of where all a bike might take me; suddenly my bike was suddenly taking me everywhere – brought with them two things into my life. The first was a profound freedom. Up until then I had been kind of limited, depending on the bus or my feet or the kindness of my parents and their car to get around. Now, I could more or less go where I wanted when I wanted.
The second thing was a new kind of anger. It is an anger that you may know about, an anger that in its extremer form actually has a name: Road rage. There is something uniquely aggravating about getting around on the modern system of streets. I don’t know if that is because it is dangerous – the bent metal of two cars meeting or, worse yet, a car and a bike meeting can send you to the hospital right now or to the morgue right now, and maybe that danger touches the reptilian parts of our brains, the fight or flight parts of our brains. Or maybe there is just something about travelling on asphalt that is plain-old frustrating. I’m curious if our ancestors getting around in buggies pulled by horses had this kind of rage. I’m guessing – and maybe I’m mistaken – that they did not, that there were rarely people hopping off of one horse to kick someone on another horse.
Regardless of the reason, I am glad that smartphones did not exist back then and the camcorders were uncommon, glad that (as far as I know) there are no videos of me on the streets of Vancouver with spit and profanity and fury flying out of my mouth. I blew my stack with some regularity. And looking back on Younger Me, I guess that some of my anger was reasonable: here were people taking stop signs as suggestions and merging across lanes and opening doors without any idea that the shoulder check had ever been invented.
Justified or not, reasonable or not, I rarely achieve that level of anger on the road today. Some of that has to do with aging, I’m sure – the years have rounded off my edges, much as the ocean rounds off the edges of broken glass. But some of it is also a choice.
Be patient, says James. Be patient for the coming of the Lord.
Be patient like the farmer is patient with the earth.
Be patient and do not grumble, lest you be judged.
The Lord is coming soon.
I don’t know if how we behave in traffic is a trivial example, a silly example; there are so many things to get angry about that matter way more than how and where someone merges on the highway. I do know that it’s a real example, an everyday example. And maybe how we meet others on the road is a kind of sacrament – a kind of outward and visible sign – of how we meet our neighbours in general.
I wonder if part of what James means by this entreaty to patience is that grumbling, that rage does nothing to make the Kingdom get here any sooner. And that sometimes it might even slow it down.
Because choosing to be patient – well, it doesn’t mean being morally lazy, acting as though nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Rather, I want to suggest that patience, holy patience, means allowing that your neighbour is as complex as you, as contradictory as you, as well-intended as you, as fallible and broken as you, as loved by God as you.
These days, I still do speak to people who run stop signs or don’t shoulder check. But I speak to them way differently than I did in 1990. Because what I noticed over the years is that when folks swore at me or yelled at me or sent sarcasm or accusation my way, I become all but completely unable to listen to what they had to say. I get closed off like a turtle, all of my energy reflexively going into defending myself.
These days I will say something like, Shoulder check, please! Or That’s a stop sign. I don’t know my patience changes anyone’s behaviour – there is no scientist to interview these folks and to measure their reactions. I do know, if absolutely nothing else, this way of being in the world changes me. To encounter my neighbour with patience – well, my blood pressure is lower, I am happier, I am more generous.
I trust that this practice matters. And I wonder what it would be like if I and we could find a way of practicing this kind of patience not just on the roads but more broadly. What if we met folks who lived differently or voted differently with holy patience? Again, not shrugging at our excusing injustice, but encountering injustice with the assumption that even those who perpetuate it are as complex as we are, as beloved of God as we are? That might change us. That might change everything.
To move around a major city such as Portland, whether it be by car or by bicycle or by foot or by something else, is to have abundant opportunities to lose your temper. There are so many people out there making choices that you just would not make: folks regarding stop signs as suggestions; folks merging or opening doors without any sense that the shoulder check has ever been invented; folks driving in the highway’s leftmost lane who are moving so epically slowly that they are very nearly going backwards; and of course folks so absorbed by their phones that they have no idea that the light changed several weeks ago.
I’ve been a bicycle commuter for very nearly thirty years, going back to my days at the University of British Columbia. And I’ve done my fair share of temper losing, my fair share of getting red in the face of and shouting words that you aren’t allowed to say in church at my fellow commuters.
And looking back on Younger Me, I guess I can understand why he blew his stack as often and as enthusiastically as he did. To be on a bike in traffic – remember that in the early nineties bike lanes essentially did not exist – is to be profoundly vulnerable, vulnerable not an emotional or psychic sense but in an “I might go to the hospital or to the morgue” kind of sense. And when someone in a truck or a car makes a choice that puts you in danger, that old cocktail of adrenaline and fear and anger is not far away. Yelling is maybe reasonable.
But reasonable or not, understandable or not, I don’t yell much on my bike anymore. It isn’t just that I am embarrassed by some of the stuff that I shouted on the streets of Vancouver all the years ago (although I am embarrassed – I hope that there are no video records of me with bulging eyes and pointing figures and spit flying out of my mouth) but more than I came to believe that my yelling wasn’t helping anyone to become a better driver. And it certainly wasn’t helping me.
Now, let me pause here and say that I am in no way advocating for shrugging in the face of injustice. Certain things are wrong and we have a duty as moral people and as disciples to say as much. Rather, I mean something more like this: even as we name what is wrong or unfair or unjust, even as we act in response, is there a way we can do so while also remembering and honoring the dignity and humanity of the one with whom we speak? Is there a way that we can remember that they are contradictory and complex, just like us, that they sometimes make bad decisions, just like us, that most of the time they are trying their best, just like us.
Imagine what politics in this country would be like if we chose to act that way. Rather than assuming that our neighbour is being awful on purpose, destructive on purpose, selfish on purpose.
These days I still do sometimes talk to other folks on the road. But I talk to them really differently than I did in 1990. If someone makes a merge without shoulder checking – and that, as you likely know, is a scary experience on a bike – I’ve gotten to the point where I am able to say, “Could you please shoulder check?”