"Traffic is Awesome"

The Weekly Read #18, "Traffic"

In many cities, cars are the main method for transportation. That statement certainly rings true for Los Angeles, California. Under the busy Southern California sun, tens of thousands of cars drive among the concrete pathways designed for such use.  While Los Angeles County spans across many city districts and earthly valleys, there is a constant in the chaos: a grid system designed to make navigation a little easier, a little more possible.  

During my first three years in this city, my main source of income came from being a DoorDash driver.  In those 36 months, I got a reasonably solid grip on the vast landscape that Central Los Angeles is.  I learned a lot about the city, the people, and the habits and tendencies of each.  I also learned a bit about myself.  Spending 40+ hours a week in the car, mostly alone, allowed a lot of time for reflection.  This sort of lonesome vehicular self-reflection seems more commonplace for Los Angeles, California than for places like Overland Park, Kansas or Tulsa, Oklahoma.  This is because of the city’s traffic that shows no mercy to any soul, no matter how wealthy, famous, or in a rush. While Los Angeles may not offer as grand a communal experience of public transportation like other major cities such as New York or Tokyo, the residents and visitors of this town certainly share in the individual experience of sitting alone in a car and trying to pass time.  Even if one is not a driver by profession, the standard local still spends a gluttonous amount of their time inside their metal beasts.  

Inside these cars, anything is possible.  Across the five lane highways, you might see a grown man crafting a text while driving with one hand, a group of teenagers fully indulged in a conversation with all the windows down,  or a lady with all of her windows up belting to a song.  All of these situations are all of us at one point or another, certainly the belting part. With every year, I notice more of how similar we all are.  No matter our age, religion, hometown, race, or gender; we all share these communal human wants and needs that connect us in this experience of Life on Earth.  Whether it’s the search for love, the boredom of traffic, or the inescapable need for oxygen: we are all in this together.

Those types of thoughts and realizations are the kind that happen when you have spent an hour in the car and the podcast you prepared for the drive has finished and you are still thirty minutes from your destination that was only 12 miles away to begin with.  The times when those types of thoughts arise are why I love being in the car: when my mind is free to roam, jumping from thought experiment to observation to memory with no feeling of time wasted.  There is nothing more to do with your brain power than paying enough attention to the road to not cause any harm or hiccups in the flow of traffic.  And while it feels callous to speak about maneuvering a vehicle with such little thought, this is the effect of the inevitable nature of traffic in this beautiful city.  

Even when we are separated physically, our souls are infinitely connected.  Whether we are in different vehicles or different cities, we are together.  This chain of emails is just another thread in the ever expanding spider-webs that are our Lives. Thank goodness for it all.  Thank goodness for sweet, sweet sugar.  Thank goodness for you.  Keep rocking and rolling. Keep locking and dropping.  And if you get tired,

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