It Would Be a Shame to Ram into the Back of a Truck

 There’s this spot that I drive through every day.  It’s a very old, not-so-graceful on-ramp from one interstate to another.  A lot of traffic merges onto the off-ramp, goes through a toll booth, merges into one lane, merges into one lane with another road, then finally spills out onto the other interstate which is pretty much always chock-full-o-traffic during rush hour.  This is just how it goes…every day.  

It doesn’t take much to disrupt the flow of traffic.  A slow truck will kill the experience for dozens of cars behind it.  A slow merger will send ripples back up the ramp and onto the first highway as well as down the second highway.  It’s just messy, and a disruption makes it messier.  

Today, the disruption was substantial.  Even my “shortcut” didn’t work out for me.  As I sat in a merger’s parking lot, a police car buzzed by.  A few minutes later, an ambulance followed.  At times like that, a few minute delay during my commute just doesn’t seem like as big a deal.  I inched my car forward for a few more minutes until the cause of the delay came into view.  An SUV apparently slammed into the back of another vehicle.  The driver’s door was open.  Nobody was inside.  The airbag had deployed.  The rest of the car was empty.  

The other vehicle barely had a scratch.  It was a large moving van; not the semi-kind, but the kind you rent from U-Haul.  The driver didn’t look phased.  He just looked pissed.

At 5:00 PM on any given weekday afternoon, the traffic in this area flows at about 15 miles per hour or so.  So, that means that the guy in the SUV slammed into the back of the truck with enough force to crunch hood back towards the windshield and under the rear of the truck.  He slammed into the back of the truck with enough force to deploy the airbag.  He slammed into the back of the truck with enough force to require an ambulance.  Since he wasn’t standing around near the accident, I take it he was in the back of said ambulance.

So, I wonder what on Earth it was that he was doing that caused him to ram the truck at a speed that was obviously greater than 15 miles per hour.  Hopefully, it was really important.  You just never know.  It’s not my place to judge.  However…it did get me thinking.  What if he was simply on the phone?  Or maybe he was juggling his BlackBerry and the wheel.  Maybe he fell asleep.  There are a thousand ways to become distracted on the road, and all of them are potentially dangerous.

All of them are potentially fatal.

Distraction can be a devastating thing.  On the road and behind the wheel, it can mean something as innocuous as a minor fender bender or something as tragic as a traffic-related death.  But off the road and in the more private corners of our lives, distraction can be just as innocuous or just as tragic.  Tragic, like a dream unfulfilled.  Tragic, like unrealized potential.  Tragic, like a chance not taken.  Tragic, like a love unspoken.

In our lives, distraction keeps us from making the most of every moment of every day.  Distraction keeps us from living consciously.  The struggle is to keep our hearts, souls, and minds present and in the moment.  It would be a shame to ram into the back of a truck.