After a long day of driving around, hungry and tired children, and insane summer heat, my family was finally on our way home. Our drive included a long stretch on one of New Mexico’s highways (Paseo Del Norte). Unfortunately due to rode construction this major three lane highway that connects Rio Rancho to Albuquerque was cut down to two lanes. It is the right and middle lane that turn onto our exit and the left lane that continues on, it also happened to be the right lane that is currently closed. Normally, details like this are not important in my posts but this one needs the details explained in order to make sense.
A teenage girl with two friends in her gold van was talking on her cell phone and must have decided she couldn’t wait in the middle lane so she moved to the right lane and sped up to the front of the line. Right before the lane was blocked off by those lovely cement blocks, she switched into the middle lane (mind you, no turn signal) in an attempt to save herself time and cut everyone else off. She must have realized that there was not enough space between the car she cut off and the car in front of her to slow down; just as fast as she swerved into the middle lane, she swerved out to the left. The car she cut off tried desperately to avoid an accident and slammed on their brakes, this however caused the car behind them to crash into their rear. (This is where my family comes in.) A little red car in front of me hit their brakes and managed to swerve into the left lane. I had seconds to hit my brakes so that we did not hit the two people who just wrecked ahead of us. The woman behind me didn’t have a chance. My husband looked back in time to see this, he warned us all and we had only a second brace ourselves.
CRASH!
Our beautiful daughters are terrified now and screaming louder than ever. Fantastic “French” is flying out of everyone’s mouth and my husband and I dart from the car. I swing the girls’ door open so that I can check on them and make sure they are okay.
(Thank God they were.)
Not five feet behind the woman who hit me, a truck is able to hit his brakes and stop in time to avoid a three car accident. The van behind him? No chance. They hit the back of his truck, and now there have been rear-end accidents at 40 miles per hour.
Everyone is okay, and by some crazy Grace a police aid and EMT happen to be driving by. In 100 degree weather we sort out information, comfort crying children, and check to make sure everyone is okay.
The beauty of this event was found in the actions of those who crashed. They were grateful, kind, and patient. As badly as I wanted to scream at the woman behind me, she greeted me with concern and worry. A young boy, who couldn’t have been more than ten, came over to make sure that everyone else was alright. (He was in the van accident).
The ugly side to this story is that the teenage girl in the gold van probably had no idea that she facilitated three separate accidents with small children involved. It was through her reckless actions that dozens of people had to wait half an hour longer while things got sorted out. Because she was in such a rush to get wherever she was going, six cars are now wrecked. We are lucky that the incident went as well as it did; however things could have been much more tragic.
I now come to my point. While our actions may not always affect us instantly, they do affect someone around us. Think of your choices like a pebble being thrown into the water. The pebble is gone before it ever sees the ripple of the water, but the flowers, frogs, dragon flies all feel it. That ripple shakes their world. Our actions are ripples in the world around us; they shake the lives of people we may never meet. When we make careless, vengeful, or selfish actions we hurt people who were only passing by. When we make kind, generous, and loving actions we leave an imprint of kindness on people who just happened to be in the same area. I was angry with that teenage girl earlier, but now I have let it go. I worry that her actions will lead to a ripple even worse than the one today.
Think about that. Especially when doing things (like driving) that can affect so many people in such great ways. The few seconds you save by cutting someone off isn’t worth the your life, the life of the soccer mom, the kind Californian, the old couple, the laborer, the two beautiful girls, the concerned 10-year-old, the young married couple, or who ever…
It takes only one second to ruin countless lives; do you think that is a second you could spare?
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