The other day, while driving around town, I pulled up to some train tracks at the same time as a school bus, which stopped before it crossed the tracks. I vaguely remembered the law about not passing a stopped bus, and I made a quick decision, and stopped too. Then I heard a horn behind me, and looked back to see the face of an irate driver in a truck, just a few feet from my bumper. I was startled out of my early morning trance, glancing back often to make sure he didn't slam into the back of my car. When we pulled up next to each other at the red light, he glared and mouthed insults, and I gave him a hand signal to let him know what I thought of him.

I don't lose my temper like that much anymore, and when I do I can feel an adrenaline rush that sometimes lasts for hours, a fight or flight reflex that I'm sure has been encoded in my DNA over millions of years of evolution. However much I would like to lash out in those moments at someone else, I have a secondary response, which is to rise above the momentary lapses of reason. I call this new evolutionary impulse Paulette. Fortunately, she happened to be in the car with me that day.

Within seconds after my outburst, Paulette said to me, "Michael, that is not who you are. You're more than that." I knew, in that very moment, I had a choice to either defend my behavior, or to see it in a new light. After 30 years of her coaching, I am happy to say I chose to listen, to what she had to say, and to look, at what unhinged me.

I spoke a few weeks ago about gaining access to the unknown. I can see now that the unknown is also the untried. If we react in only one way when something disrupts our peace of mind, we may never notice, much less try, anything other than what our conditioning demands. Conversely, the more choices we are able to see, or generate on our own, the more space is available to us. When you are able to see another way to be, for instance, that is less stressful for yourself, and more gracious towards others, the belief in "me against the world" disappears, and a world of other possibilities emerges.

I was telling this story to a good friend last night. He told me a similar story of his own, with an additional lesson. He too was tailgated by a guy in a truck, he said. But in his story, the guy in the truck happened to have the phone number for his catering business on the back window of his truck. Now here's the weird part: My friend already knew the guy's name and number - because he was planning to call him to cater a project he was working on. So he called him, on impulse, then and there. Just as my friend moved over a lane and the truck whizzed by, they exchanged hand signals and words — using their cell phones.

Later that day, my friend realized what he had done, and decided to call and apologize. When he reached the guy at home, my friend told him who he was, and the guy immediately went into a defensive mode. "I don't have time to talk with you..." he said. My friend has done a lot of work on himself, including his anger, and he said in a relaxed tone of voice, "Please give me two minutes of your time. I want to apologize for my behavior." The guy calmed down a little. And then my friend told him how he knew who he was, and that he had been planning to call him to work on a project together. Now the guy began to apologize. My friend stayed right there with him and said, "You might want to take your phone number off your truck, so this doesn't happen again with someone else." The tension melted, and both men came to see each other in a new light.

What happened after that was the beginning of a new relationship, rather than a quick ending. The upshot is that they are going to work together. So, what could have been a disaster, or at least bruised egos, turned into an opportunity for what neither of them could have anticipated. This is sometimes referred to in ancient texts as entering the dragon's lair.

What it really takes is the courage to be who you truly are when no rules or agreement are present. This is the journey into the unknown.

What value can be drawn from these stories? I don't know, but I suspect you have one or two of your own. It seems to me we are faced with two often opposing forces. One force urges us to do what we've always done in those situations: Get mad. Get even. Get out of there. The other force pulls us towards the gates of the unknown, where we have never been, and where many more choices are possible. The evolutionary spiral is calling us to a new way of being.

How will you answer that call?



PRACTICE
This week's practice is to find (or create) more space between stimulus and response. In those areas where (up until now) flight or fight has been your only choice, look for new and untried ways to respond that open, rather than close down opportunities for relationship, partnership and cooperation.

In peace,
Michael