Turning Collision into Compassion on thanksgiving

This lovely photo is of Memorial Bridge in Washington D.C.  taken from the Virginia side.

It's also the site of where two cars and I crushed each other yesterday. 

Virginia has some lovely crosswalk right where bridge traffic meets the highway on the roundabout.

A man stopped for a bike.

I screeched to a halt.

The man behind me couldn't stop his car.

Three car crunch.

We're all ok, thank you.

The man behind me felt really bad. He waited patiently as I spent 1 hour talking with the insurance folks and trying to see if my headlights worked.

He was so apologetic. I said, "It's okay, I just really wanted to use my car tomorrow to deliver food to homeless people."

He said, "Ugh, now I feel really bad."

So, I invited him to come with me on Thanksgiving to serve the homeless, elderly, poor and sick. 

He said, yes!  I welcomed him to our home for dinner afterwards.

So we made a good thing out of an-almost devastating situation.





I think we're a little far out from being able to ask ISIS' help to tend to the refugees. Since they're fleeing in part from ISIS. 


But, still there was something hopeful in this Thanksgiving story.

As a scholar of language and conflict, I pay close attention to story lines and make sure I don't fall into problematic ones.

So, I consciously chose to not play the angry victim at the scene of a crash. I chose, instead, to make a friend.

He wasn't really at fault. It was a terrible intersection. No one got crunched, just our cars.

I will carry a reminder of this day with me. I want to apply it on a larger scale though still unsure how to apply it to ISIS.

Unlike my new friend, I cannot invite ISIS to thanksgiving dinner for at least three reasons:

1) It's a felony,
2) They'd probably kill me, and
3) They'd likely be terrible company.

That said, at least on a smaller scale, we don't have to perpetuate hate and react with anger when we receive a relatively small bop on the head.

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