I Wonder If The Road To Success Starts In A Parking Lot?

This morning I drove a neighbor and his dog to the vet's office for shots. I chose to wait in the car in the parking lot instead of going in because the day was gorgeous and I wanted to enjoy it. This particular animal hospital is at an intersection of a major state highway and a country road. There is a stop light there and a lot of traffic.

I was just admiring the work of the state employees on their zero turn lawn mowers racing up and down the median strip when an unmarked tractor trailer entered the intersection. There was no visible identifying freight company markings on it, but on the side of the trailer in huge letters it said; "Nobody said the road to success was a smooth and easy drive. You just have to watch out for the bumps." As I finished reading that I realized the stop light on my side of the intersection was green which meant that the light that controls the direction he was traveling in was red. He had slowed for the light but somehow didn't stop. Fortunately there was no traffic at the crossroad or his road to success might have included not only a few bumps but a few traffic tickets as well.

That intersection has seen it's share of death. After the wife of a friend of my family and her 3 children were killed there back in the 80s, the state reconfigured the intersection to try to make it safer. It, of course, didn't change much. It isn't a flaw in the intersection that is the problem, it's a flaw in the drivers. Yes, I am a driver and including myself in that statement. While I don't speed or make unsafe turns, there are times when the boredom of the drive lets my mind wander. All drivers are constantly distracted by life which is why I get so frustrated with those who feel they can drive safely while doing other things.

When we stop to think about the fact that we're already thinking about things that have nothing to do with the road and the other cars, pedestrians, animals, farm equipment or what have you, we're already multitasking. Most of us do not have a brain designed to do that successfully so why would anyone add fixing makeup, eating or posting status updates on Facebook?

Today the sky was beautifully blue, the grass was green, the flowers were blooming and I saw all this while sitting in a parking lot waiting for my neighbor to come out. Made me a bit nostalgic for those Sunday drives we used to take in the summer. Now we're in too much of a hurry all the time to go nowhere and we haven't the sense God gave a horse to realize how much we're missing. In case you're not familiar with horses, God didn't give them much sense at all. They're smart animals, they just don't have any sense. Kind of like people these days.