Run Me Over! - The Man demanded

 

It was a calm breezy evening of September as i was driving back to my home, carrying a few errands along the way. As i got closer to my destination, so did the traffic enthralled the road. It was getting dark and hues of blue could now be seen in my rear view mirror, with cars honking and road sputtering to a stop, there was no way ahead now except to wait for the moments to pass. With vehicles inches away from each other, ebbing away at every little amount of space available, it was cramped. 

As the light turned green at a junction, with the right of passage, i rolled ahead in a steel cage carrying the embossment of 'b o s s' (6055) on the number plate, a jeep of high clearance, the ones capable of rolling anything in their way under the deep treaded tyres with little resistance. It was indeed quite a monster, the ones which make people look in awe and fear. And lo and behold there i was, sputtering inches in traffic, when a preposterous man doled with his little scooter in front of me, trying to cut away and go ahead in a hurry. By the time he rolled ahead, it was quite clear that my fender had touched his scooter on his way out. The little man shouted at me! "MIGHT AS WELL DRIVE IT ON MY HEAD FOOL!" to which my passenger on the shotgun seat, riled up at the behaviour shouted back, "GET GOING OR WE WILL!". 

Perhaps my fender had not done what the words of my passenger did, hurt his ego. The man now, clearly riled up and up in his rage, got down and stood in front of the vehicle, his chest barely making it above the bonnet. Demanding "RUN ME OVER", the guy, with his flailing voice now was on a death wish. Adrenaline was high and so was my mood, the animalistic tendencies kicked in. I punched the clutch with my foot, tucked the stick into gear and started revving the engine high, enough to make him walk a step back, it was clear, I was going to run this man over. The crowd now watching, muttering behind their glassed contraptions - is he going to do it? will we see a man getting run over? whose fault was it?  should we intervene? Look the light's green again! should we honk? 

A flurry of thoughts passed by my mind in those moments, what was strength? this rage i felt, to end a person, knowing well he wouldn't be able to do anything to me nor the crowd. Was it rage? was this true strength? To come down to his level and fulfil his wish? To act on my emotion and adrenaline? 

To be honest, i did feel very strong in the moment, sitting quietly with a menacing look on my face, revving the engine up in a big jeep clearly branding a title on the number plate - the kind of which was enough to know for anyone to not mess with the driver of the vehicle. And yet, a sound of reason stopped me. I reversed instead, reversing the effects of the rage we both felt in the moment, i let him go, only to see him quite shaken and unable to stand his scooter up now. 

This sound of reason, it spoke to me - Real Strength is knowing that you can do something to someone and choosing not to. Real strength isn't in anger or in rage, or in those moments of flurry where the adrenaline kicks in and you choose to fight; It is in between those moments that you choose not to destroy. Real strength is knowing you can hit the button and end it all, but chose not to. Real strength is our choices we make, the control we have on our emotions and the control we have on our speech. 

I could've very well caused a lot of harm to this person, perhaps not death, but harm nonetheless- to him, to his scooter or to his psyche which he then would talk about to his family, this seemingly nobody would then become a memory of the past, instead he became a memoir in my blog - a lesson for me to remember. 

~ I chose to stay calm, I chose to control the rage, I chose therefore i have Strength ~