Happy Twosday, folks!
She told me “parking there is a b!*$%,” so I was on high alert, scanning for any spot on the street I could slide Camille into. (Camille is my 2014 Subaru Forester. I named her Camille because when I first got her I couldn’t tell if she was silver or light blue. She seemed like a chameleon. Now I know she’s 100% silver — because that’s what Chick-fil-A puts on my drive-thru receipt, and they’re never wrong.)
Camille and I were 15 minutes late to a meeting I landed with a cold email. I wasn’t running late because I was late. But because I showed up at the wrong place on time.
I was at a co-working space in Cabbagetown, Atlanta. It’s where I thought I was meeting (for the first time) a creative guy I respect. We both texted we were “here.”
Surveying a public space full of strangers and trying to find someone you’ve never met before is a cruel game popularized by Hinge and LinkedIn. I thought I’d outsmart the game by wearing a red beanie. “I’m wearing a red beanie,” I texted.
After failing to find Waldo, he suggested I may be at the wrong co-working space. I was.
Here’s the text I sent when I realized my mistake:
“Shoot. I’m at the wrong one facepalm 🤦”
Yes — in my haste, I typed out “facepalm” and put the emoji.
After sending the squirmy text, I asked the girl closest to me about where I was trying to go. That’s when she told me how its parking resembles a female dog. Girl dogs don’t scare me. But when paired with parking, I’m terrified. When I just think about parking in unfamiliar places, my Garmin thinks I’m starting a workout.
I also take pride in being punctual. But with sweaty palms in December, this Prompt King was feeling defeated by 7:15 am. I was late and parking was more scarce than toilet paper in 2020.
Then, I saw it. I saw them.
Two spots.
A well-dressed man in his 50s parked his BMW in front of a fire hydrant. He’s still in his car, talking with a construction worker. There’s a spot behind him and in front of him.
I took the one in front of him and gave a mental fist pump for snagging a spot.
“You’re doing great, Luke,” I said to myself. “You found a spot. Now let’s go find this stranger!”
Before my feet hit the pavement, I heard shouting.
“THAT WAS SO MESSED UP!”
It’s fire hydrant man.
“Excuse me? I’m sorry, but are you talking to me,” I asked him.
“Yes,” he shouted from his parking spot right behind mine. “YOU KNOW I was about to get that spot and you took it as I was talking.”
My body froze and my blood boiled. “I’m sorry, but I honestly had no idea. How was I supposed to know?”
“Move your car,” he screamed with a pointing finger. “That was so messed up! I was about to park there!”
By now, I don’t mind moving my car. It’s not worth pointing out to him that he’s now in a perfectly fine parking spot. But I do mind his tone.
So I said, “Sir, could you please be kinder?”
Confused and shaking in pure rage, he says all he knows how to say at this point: “Move your car!”
“I will, but please be kinder about it.”
I moved my car, watched him roll up a few feet to take my spot, and let this two-minute interaction wreck my thought life for the rest of the day.
People seem angrier these days.
Just this past weekend, an old man shouted at me at the bookstore for trying to open the door for him. He thought I was making it harder for him to push his cart through the door. “Just keep going,” he shouted, “I can get it!” When I suggested I could just take his cart for him, he shouted, “Then take it,” as he pushed it at me.
And months ago, a woman flashed her pistol at me after I honked at her before she caused a wreck. She was smoking weed and looking at her phone. I honked to get her attention before she hit me. Instead of receiving a grateful hand wave, I received a wave of a pistol.
I don’t know if it’s my bad luck or a more common reality for most of us, but it seems like an unusual amount of anger is in the air. The roads seem ragier. People’s fuses seem shorter.
A world of short fuses in an election year scares me. We need long fuses if we want to build spaces of belonging.
To help build longer fuses, here are two truths I wanted to share with fire hydrant man, myself, and you.
People are not out to get you.
Fire hydrant man assumed I had malicious intentions.
We often feel personally attacked when things don’t go our way. But people aren’t out to get you — not even politicians. People are primarily looking out for themselves — stressed out by the humdrum of life and just trying to find a place to park.
Whenever I have the irrational fear that someone is hiding in my house to get me, I ask myself the humbling question: who do I think I am that someone would care about getting me?
In a world where everyone is looking at themselves, we’re much more likely to be invisible than to be preyed upon.
Misunderstandings can lead to anger or curiosity. The choice is yours and your decision will shape you.
Much of comedy is built on misunderstandings.
In the 1930s, Abbot and Castello entertained audiences by asking Who’s on First?
Seventy years later, Gob hears “bees" when Lindsay says “beads” in Arrested Development.
On the screen, misunderstandings lead to laughter. But in reality, misunderstandings squeeze out whatever is inside us. That’s often frustration and anger.
Fire hydrant man misunderstood my intentions. So did pistol woman. There’s more than one way to interpret a car honk. But if you think the world is out to get you, then every honk sounds like a threat — even the ones trying to help you.
I think road rage is common because we can’t see the people we’re angry at. It’s easier to scream at a silhouette behind metal than a human behind flesh. In cars, we’re simply moving too fast to see people. Tech is also making this true outside of our cars. Our digital pace of life makes it harder to truly see people and easier to justify anger.
Curiosity towards people often leads to understanding them better. And understanding leads to empathy. But curiosity demands a slower pace of life where we aren’t ruled by our assumptions and impulses.
In 2024, media will continue to feed you the lie that the world is out to get you. Out-of-context quotes on X and clickbait headlines will entice misunderstandings. These are micro-opportunities to choose a fork in the road between anger and curiosity. And it’s the tiny choices like these that compound to carve our character.
I hope we’ll be the type of people who can stay curious when life squeezes us. Less assumptions and more conversations. More kindness and less facepalms 🤦
✌️
— Luke
P.S. Here are three books I’ve enjoyed lately.
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