Traffic

There are many things in the world I don’t understand: I don’t understand how people can still  watch ‘Friends’ reruns, I don’t understand how come I work all year and get paid only 12 times, I don’t understand how accountants get up in the morning.

But what always struck me the most is traffic. Every morning, millions of people around the world get into their cars and 15 minutes later they are, most likely, stand in traffic. The Regular Joe of course takes his motorcycle to work. And I always think to myself “who are all those people who stand every morning at that light who is just ever red? They knew it’s going to be jammed just like the day before. What brought them to it?”

I see you each morning as I pass you by. Picking your nose, shaving, fixing your make-up, reading the paper, coffee and cigarette, listening to the radio that talk about the traffic and on and on and on and on…

In this blog I will talk a lot about what I call ‘the lost of time value’. In the past few years people have stopped appreciating their time and worse, they stopped appreciating the time of others.

There is no doubt standing in traffic is the ultimate waste of time.                    

When you talked about cars 30 – 20 years ago you talked about freedom, independence! Now it is a prison. There are so many cars and so many people going to the same places at the same time, on the same roads, looking for the same parking space.

The truth is I just find traffic really stupid but the after effects are what really bother me.

Traffic can change a man. He can wake up with a smile, eat breakfast, kiss his supermodel wife and get on the road to his 3.5mn a year job. But when this guy stands in traffic he gets mad. He fights for every inch of the road, he honks (I will talk about honking in a different post) and he’s filled with hate and rage.

There is no doubt the world would be filled by much calmer people if there was no traffic.

So, what’s my point? Just relax and start to appreciate your time. Take the train, take the bus, take a ride with someone. Can’t you see how stupid it is to get into a 1ton box, go 7 miles per hour only to look for a place to put it?

In his book  ‘The Clown’, Heinrich Böll tells of a man who spends alot of time in a train station. he looks at the trains taking and bringing people every morning and then the same people take the same trains in the evenings. It makes him ask himself why all these people won’t switch jobs or houses so they don’t have to travel each day.

Think about that tomorrow on your way to work.

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Change to over-drive

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