High Beams
A number of weeks ago I shared my thoughts on how we cannot always see the difficulties in the life of another person (They Don’t LOOK Handicapped). I have taken some time off for vacation and while I was relaxing, I remembered a story I had been told quite some time ago, but informative nonetheless.
A person was driving from one town to another. For some reason, they were running behind and found themselves driving into the dark of night. As the sun set, they reached down to turn on the car’s headlights (this was before auto on light systems). They discovered that they had no lights – at least no low beam lights. The only way they could see was to drive with the high beams on – which lead to many difficult encounters.
If you have driven long, you know that driving at night with your high beams on can blind the oncoming traffic – not to mention make them angry. They will flash their lights at you as a request for you to dim your lights. They will flash them more if you don’t dim your lights. They will put their own high beams on in frustration and/or anger if you don’t dim your lights.
They may blow their horn as they pass by in an expression of their anger, displeasure, frustration. They may even make hand gestures or shout at you as they pass by – all to let you know that they have been negatively effected by you not dimming your lights. In other words, you have offended them, hurt them, angered, annoyed them, etc.
Imagine you were the driver who could not dim your lights without putting yourself and the oncoming traffic in danger. How would you feel knowing you were hurting them, making them angry, frustrated and you could not help it?
In life, many times, we find we have hurt, offended or annoyed others unknowingly. We apologize and try to not do that again. But what happens when we DO know we have hurt, offended or annoyed others? What then?
Some people have health or physical issues that are beyond their control. Take turrets syndrome. This causes ticks or muscle spasms that cause uncontrollable body movements as well as vocal outbursts that can be just sound or words, often unwanted foul words.
Other times, there are folks with life experiences that cause them to respond to events around them in powerful ways – like folks with PTSD. Recent celebrations of Independence Day with fireworks has caused some with PTSD to relive battle experiences and to have flashbacks.
Movie scenes can cause those with painful life experiences to relive those powerful emotions. Those around persons like this get caught up in their situations. Like the driver of the car with only high beam lights, these persons know they are impacting folks around them in an unacceptable manner, but they are helpless to stop it. If they deny the behavior, they cause damage to themselves (suppressing feelings never turns out good). If they keep going, they offend, anger, or frustrate others.
As we live our lives, we need to consider that the person making us angry, frustrated, or offended might actually be aware of how they are impacting us – but totally unable to do anything different. We never know what is happening within another person, but we can know and chose how we respond to them. We can offer them grace, mercy and understanding that what is going on MAYBE outside their control. They might long to do or be different – only that is not an option.
Like driving at night with you high beams on – you want to dim your lights, you would love to dim your lights, you know you need to dim your lights – but you CANNOT dim your lights.
Next time someone offends you, annoys you, or makes you angry – see if you can offer them Grace and understanding. I know if I was driving with my high beams on and could not dim them that I would hope other drivers would offer me the grace to wonder if I had any choice in the matter…….How about you??