The Dog. The Boy. The Busy Road.
Standing in my front yard, late afternoon one day this spring, I suddenly see the neighbor kid (about 8) go sprinting after his new 6-month-old husky puppy.
It was a chaotic moment. An older woman was shouting out the front door of the boy’s house. I quickly calculated that our neighbor’s housekeeper had arrived and had accidentally let the puppy get loose.
Down the block went the dog. And the kiddo…
…straight toward the busy road not far from our house.
I jump in my car and head that way, not wanting the kid or the dog to get hurt. Heading straight in the direction of the busy road where the kid and the dog are running.
(By the way; this isn’t a story about me saving the day or anything).
Sure enough, I get to the busy road just as the dog bolts across it, kid following.
Super scary.
I pull my car up. Another person had pulled over to help too (people are good).
The dog darts back and forth on the side of the road.
Chaos continues. Everybody’s afraid.
We get the kid to stop chasing the puppy.
Then the dog speeds back out into traffic…
I step out into the road to slow down a guy in an oncoming Tesla. The dog runs back into our neighborhood. The kid sprints safely behind (eventually making it back home with the dog).
The guy in the Tesla lowers his window to shout at me (the other lady had gotten in her car and taken off already).
“Keep your f*<%*~g dog under control (plus some other choice words and names for me),” then he speeds off!!!
I shouted back my own creative mix of spirited language and impractical recommendations for where he might shove things.
And he drove off. And I got back in my car. Hackles raised. Adrenaline pumping. Angry. Relieved. Angry. Scared . Grateful. Angry. Relieved.
I keep thinking about that guy. Tesla guy.
I’m still pretty enraged when I think about him, to be honest. It wasn’t my dog. I was just trying to help. I didn’t really do anything to this guy. What a jerk, right?
But I’m trying to wonder about him. How he felt.
He was probably scared. He was probably already stressed from his day at work and his commute. He was probably viscerally responding to a moment that was out of his control.
And I want to feel empathy. I want to acknowledge that feeling out of control was probably as horrible a feeling for him as it was for me.
I have moments when I’m able to open my heart that way, but mostly I feel angry at him.
Not to be overly dramatic, but this feels like a metaphor for politics or society to me.
When things we care about are in danger, our visceral emotions flare up. Our primal feelings show up right alongside our panicked efforts to help. And we end up yelling angrily at each other and seeing each other as the enemy.
But I have to remember… that guy stopped his car.
That guy, despite his yelling, hated what harm could have befallen that dog.
That guy, even though he expressed it in a way that nearly made things worse, was just feeling scared that something bad might happen.
He wanted this situation to be prevented in the future.
He wasn’t my enemy.
I don’t think I was his either.
Anyway, the dog and the kid were fine. It was a really weird five-minute moment in my day that came out of nowhere and that I can’t get out of my head.
Let’s see if we can make meaning out of that story.
Every once in a while I dabble in some non-canonical ancient texts. It’s so cool how we all have access to the written history of the world at the touch of a button.
Anyway, I recently was paging through this old Jewish text known as The Book of Sirach. There’s this line that reads…
“Can one refuse mercy to a sinner like oneself, yet seek pardon for one’s own sins?” (The Book of Sirach 28:4)
If I am imperfect, I must forgive the imperfectness of others.
As fast as possible.
And I am certainly imperfect.
May you know mercy and forgiveness and dole it out graciously. May you see the deepest desires of the broken people around you. May you believe in the best that lies beneath their worst. And may you respond with tender love and delicious grace as often as possible. Amen.