Tuesday
Dec012009
City Drivers Interbeing
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 10:31AM
By Jennifer Egert, Ph.D.
I was recently given a great gift: a hand-me-down car. I haven’t owned a car in over 10 years, not since coming back home to the city from graduate school. Driving in the city is always a trip. It is kind of like a video game, all the unexpected objects darting out from different corners, other cars around you driving close, speeding up to cross over 3 lanes to make that right turn that you don’t want to miss. I had always thought about driving in the city as offensive rather than defensive, “every man/woman for him or herself!” But driving recently, I realized that it is much more collaborative than I thought, much more interdependent, drivers “inter-being.”
“Interbeing” refers to an inherent interdependence of all things. It refers to the web of life and how all of our actions can have consequences for the greater world and world community. What does this have to do with driving? Well, as I was making my way through Times Square, it was pretty hectic. Trucks double parked, making deliveries, taxis darting in an out of cars going too slow, tourists not sure how to navigate the crosswalks, cyclists weaving through the cars. But it worked. No car crashes. No one hurt crossing the street or riding a bike. The drivers just knew the dance, how to negotiate the rugged terrain of the pot-holes, how to avert disaster with the perfect swerve. It struck me that city life is a lot like that. Millions of people somehow making it through, day to day, riding the trains, waiting on lines, avoiding traffic, not bumping into each other despite the 50 people sharing the sidewalk with you. This awareness sure made me appreciate my fellow New Yorkers more and perhaps even gave me a little more patience for the very, very slow driving guy from Georgia. Just a little…
There is an “interbeing” of city life, an ecosystem that we all contribute to. How much do we see that? How much do we pay attention? I am not usually aware of this connection in the flow of city life, but a car helped me to be more mindful of just that this week. What would it be like if we all carried the awareness of interbeing in our city life?
I was recently given a great gift: a hand-me-down car. I haven’t owned a car in over 10 years, not since coming back home to the city from graduate school. Driving in the city is always a trip. It is kind of like a video game, all the unexpected objects darting out from different corners, other cars around you driving close, speeding up to cross over 3 lanes to make that right turn that you don’t want to miss. I had always thought about driving in the city as offensive rather than defensive, “every man/woman for him or herself!” But driving recently, I realized that it is much more collaborative than I thought, much more interdependent, drivers “inter-being.”
“Interbeing” refers to an inherent interdependence of all things. It refers to the web of life and how all of our actions can have consequences for the greater world and world community. What does this have to do with driving? Well, as I was making my way through Times Square, it was pretty hectic. Trucks double parked, making deliveries, taxis darting in an out of cars going too slow, tourists not sure how to navigate the crosswalks, cyclists weaving through the cars. But it worked. No car crashes. No one hurt crossing the street or riding a bike. The drivers just knew the dance, how to negotiate the rugged terrain of the pot-holes, how to avert disaster with the perfect swerve. It struck me that city life is a lot like that. Millions of people somehow making it through, day to day, riding the trains, waiting on lines, avoiding traffic, not bumping into each other despite the 50 people sharing the sidewalk with you. This awareness sure made me appreciate my fellow New Yorkers more and perhaps even gave me a little more patience for the very, very slow driving guy from Georgia. Just a little…
There is an “interbeing” of city life, an ecosystem that we all contribute to. How much do we see that? How much do we pay attention? I am not usually aware of this connection in the flow of city life, but a car helped me to be more mindful of just that this week. What would it be like if we all carried the awareness of interbeing in our city life?
