The Log in Your Eye
I had a very wild experience recently while driving to my office. I have had many bizarre events take place in my life and this one simply adds to the list. Here is what happened.
I got up on a Wednesday morning and, being behind schedule, looked to see what I could grab out of the fridge in a bit of a rush. There was a large container of grapes which had been there for more than a week. When I looked carefully, I could see that some of them had gone bad but most of them were still quite edible. So in my rush out the door, I took about half of the grapes with me for my breakfast. As I drove out of my neighborhood and onto a main road, I started to eat the grapes while driving. That’s when things got a bit nuts.
In heavy traffic while headed toward my office, I picked several of the bad grapes out of the bunch. I put my window down and pitched them out so that I could eat the good grapes without fear of putting a rotten one in my mouth. A few seconds later, I heard someone blaring on the horn and had to do a double-take when I realized it was a lady in a hybrid car next to me. Not only was she laying on her horn, but she put her passenger side window down (I was in the right-hand lane), was shaking her finger at me and swearing at me at the top of her lungs. All I could hear were words like, “litterer!” “environment!” “scumbag!” and so forth. Because A) she was laying on the horn and B) swearing at the top of her lungs and C) we were both driving and D) violence is illegal and not necessary, I really couldn’t do much but pick my jaw up from the seat of my vehicle. However, the story doesn’t end there. This was not a ten or twenty-second event. This behavior continued for a mile or two down this main road through town. Because traffic was heavy and I needed to stay on that road, I could not seem to get ahead of her or behind her much to avoid my punishment.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so scary. I realized that she thought I was literally throwing trash out the window, rather than fruit which of course is in no way littering. Many thoughts crossed my mind that morning, including the most important one: How often do I/we allow our blood pressure to boil over something that may be completely inaccurate? How often am I guilty of jumping to conclusions when what I have seen is not what really happened? And isn’t that why magic shows are so popular? More than likely, the magician didn’t really saw that poor woman in half… and you get the idea.
More importantly, she was rushing to a judgment about me without having the facts. We’ve all been there, and hopefully we learn with age. After all, we each have enough of our own issues to deal with. Which is why the Good Book summarizes it best, “Why are you worried about the speck in your brother’s eye when there is a log in yours?”