Road rage, padestrian rage and life rage

I'm upset by something I witnessed recently. It was a very severe case of what's known as 'road rage' and it was truely nastly. Although I wasn't involved in the incident it made me feel vulnerable, scared and left me in a bit of a shakey state. It's an all too common occurance though as I'm sure any reader could think of at least half a dozen times they've seen such an incident happen or heard of it happening.


I recently read on the wonder-web about a new phenomenon called path-rage! I disagree that this is a new phenomenon because I've been scowling at and challenging bike riders using the paths since my senior school days. Yet in a recent pop up news item it stated that there are increasing acts of violence and verbal abuse incidents occuring around British pathways where people simply won't give way to others. Gone are the days where you do the 'path shimmy', you know the dance where you meet a complete stranger head on and both move the same way to avoid each other, then repeat that a couple more times before laughing out loud and gesturing (in a non-offensive way) to let them past. Now, you'll do better to avoid the oncoming padestrian who, for all you know, could flare up in a rage instantly just because you dare to occupy the nearby piece of pavement for a second or two.


There does seem to be such an increase in peoples anger levels in lots of areas of everyday life. We are not living in a chilled-out society, bad feeling is commonplace. You only have to catch approximately 35 seconds of any popular soap opera to 'entertain yourself' with some fictional aggravation which is somehow meant to be a reflection of average British life.


I'm certainly not exempt from these rising levels of crossness either! I find myself getting easily agitated at others bad/dangerous driving. When I've been kind enough to pull over to let a couple of cars through the narrow gap between double parked cars I feel aggrieved when a third driver decides to come through when it was blatently my turn! I can get very angry, very quickly about the most ridiculous things.


I really feel that God has been challenging me about these 'little' things recently. What am I so angry about? What is making everyone else so volatile? Surely PMT can't be everyone elses excuse too? I've given this a bit of thought and conclude that humans just don't like to give in. I don't like to give in. It's a 'self' thing, a 'me' thing. People don't like to give way to others - weather it's on the road or path and we don't like to give in to God. Because to give in means to give our'self's' up, to become less. The Bible's so clear about this, though. We are to think of others as better than ourselves, but it doesn't come easy. I've had to make a conscious decision every time I feel my blood pressure rising in the car- a decision to give it up. Anger is such a waste of time, it doesn't actually achieve anything and in fact it's self destructive. On more than one occasion I've found myself gently simmering away about a 3 second annoyance during a ten minute journey for a whole hour afterwards! I've decided to give up my imaginary rights to the road..oh and the path. Give in to the oncoming cars and try to remember each time someone annoys me how God wants me to see them . I'm having to pray more in the car (with my eyes open!) I even tried sticking verses on the dashboard for a while -although these proved a bit distracting as they kept falling off. When all else fails I vividly recall the innocent mimic of my 6 year old shouting 'CHIMP!' from the back and I'm truely embarrased before God and my truely bad example halts me from uttering it....

most of the time.