stephanie brail

I was riding the Los Angeles airport shuttle that connects long-term parking and the bus terminal to the airport. A young woman was sitting next to me and conveying the story of her ride to the airport to a man standing nearby:

“I’m late. I was coming down the 405 and there was a 3-car pile-up. I sat in what became a parking lot for 25 minutes!!”

The 25 minutes seemed to be a big deal to her, and I figured she must not be an L.A. “native.” A 25-minute delay? That’s not much by Los Angeles terms.

The man responded to to her by joking, “3-car pile-up? They get those once a day around here.”

But it wasn’t until I heard her repeat her story to a cellphone caller that I was struck by the lack of sensitivity. Whe she retold the story to the cellphone caller, she laughed as she said “3-car pile-up.”

Wow. Someone might have been killed or seriously and permanently disfigured in that “typical” accident, and yet all we see it as is an inconvenience.

This same person may have a pet cause. Perhaps they are passionate about an issue such as “health care for all!” And yet, she expressed complete callousness and uncaring to at least three people (if not more) who could have been hurt or killed.

Perhaps this was one of those accidents that you drive by and see that everyone is okay, and I am making the wrong assumptions about her. However, from what I heard, neither the man on the shuttle nor her cellphone friend bothered to ask “was anyone hurt?”

Indeed, it took me hearing the story twice before it hit me that there were real people possibly hurt in that accident.

What’s going on here? Why can we get so riled about about “big issues” (health care, abortion, the environment) but forget to pay attention to the problems and pains right in front of us?

I have to wonder if part of it is that we’ve abdicated our personal resonsibility to help or even care on a personal level. It’s a lot easier to demand that someone outside of ourselves changes their ways or fixes the problem than to do the hard work ourselves. In this way, we can get the ego gratification of feeling like we “care,” without the expansion of soul and effort required to get our own hands dirty.

We’ll blame the government, the banks, corporations, people who vote the opposing party, but not look at ourselves. We’ll condemn BP for doing hazardous drilling but keep driving our cars because buses are beneath us.

It takes effort to make real changes. When I got rid of my car in Los Angeles, I had to readjust and be “inconvenienced” by the bus schedules. But it showed me that taking personal action, rather than railing against others for their gas consumption, was much more empowering. And it made me realize how much more personal responsibility we need to take about everything.

The first order of business is awareness. Only from being aware can we make truly impactful changes. So the next time you get annoyed by a 3-car pile-up taking precious time out of your day, think about it a little more deeply. First, have some compassion for the victims. Second, be thankful you weren’t one of them. Third, think about what you can do to help prevent such tragedies in the future.

Could you take the bus instead of drive? Stop speeding and driving so recklessly? Be more mindful and aware while driving?

These are the opportunities we miss when we mindlessly pass the accident without awareness.