Wednesday, November 4, 2009

It looks like I'm finally caught up! It's Wednesday night and I'm posting Wednesday's entry! Here we go:

First, I saw a car with one of those "In Memory of" decals. The dates were 1994-2006. I just looked at that and thought about how tough it would be to lose an 11 or 12 year old. I mean, any loss of a child is horrible and traumatic in its own unique way but losing a member of your family who's been there for 12 years? That had to be insanely tough. There was a much younger child in a car seat in the back who looked like she might have been born in 2006. I cannot imagine what the parents must have gone through.

I saw a guy painting the concrete posts on the new overpass. I was unaware that those required painting. I just assumed that they were naturally concrete colored... evidently this one needed a touch up though. Wouldn't want to have unattractive overpass supports now would we?

I realized today that I hate it when I pull up beside someone I know. I pulled along a co-worker today while we were driving to the office and my passenger window happened to be down. So he rolled his window down and we had a brief conversation at 50 MPH. That wasn't the part that I hated, it's what to do after that that bothers me. Do I speed up and try to leave them behind? Do I slow down and pull behind them? Do I just try to drive like I would normally drive and try not to look at them again? It just ends up being awkward.

I think that this awkwardness comes because of the removal from a familiar setting. I guess we relate to people differently based on where we are and when we see people outside of our comfort zone it's a little off putting. A prime example of this is my son who hides from his preschool teachers if we see them in Target. He doesn't have anything to say to them outside of the context of preschool. It was sort of that way with this guy today. Outside of work, I don't have a relationship with him. I don't know where he lives or what he does on the weekend. We've had friendly conversations in the office but he is in his own little silo isolated from my church friends who are isolated from my neighbors, etc...

Ideally I would like to break these barriers down and interact with everyone on a relational level instead of a transactional one. This particular coworker and I don't work in the same department and only really interact when one of us needs something of the other. However, he is close to my age and we really get along well when we do interact. All of us should make more of a point to de-silo our lives and let everyone mix together...

One thing that I did notice while driving and paying attention to my car and my coworker's car was the natural instincts that begin to develop when you do something repeatedly. I drive the same road to work every day and evidently my brain can now process everything without me so that I don't ever have to think about what lane I'm in. For example, my coworker switched lanes at one point and, although the lane was currently uncongested, I knew that it was going to slow down in a second. The weird part is I didn't know why it would slow down... turns out it's because cars were merging.

I just think it's amazing that our brains have been set up to work this way. I mean it's constantly running in the background trying to solve problems all day long and making connections to things that you didn't know were connected while at the same time keeping your heart beating and lungs moving. God made us incredible that we are able to function at such a high level without even thinking about it. For example, I kept having dreams last night because I was worried that on the Monday post I might have written rouge instead of rogue. Evidently this was very important to my brain because it kept getting brought up!

Finally, I got to see a near accident with one car being driven off the road by another. Car #1 was in the right turn lane moving up to the light to make a turn when Car #2 decides it needs to turn and pulls out in front of Car #1. Car #1 swerves and runs up on the curb while Car #2 takes advantage of a break in traffic and makes a right turn. It was fun to watch but I'm glad that no one and no things were hurt.

Thanks so much to everyone who has told me in the last several days that you enjoy reading this blog. I enjoy posting this stuff so please keep coming back!

Have fun...