I could hardly see my hand in front of my face when I came out of school at lunchtime. The fog had grown thicker while I'd sat in a windowless room with my boys. Fearful of thick fog this morning, because we'd had it all day yesterday and because of the weather forecast, I'd planned last night to drive the long way round to school, as the beautiful high route I usually take is in places narrow and precipitous. Some of the cavalier driving I've seen in fog, and really bizarre failures by drivers to put headlights on, made me balk at the idea of undertaking that journey in those conditions. I knew there were roadworks on the main road, though, with temporary traffic lights we'd waited several minutes at on Monday morning, long after rush hour. I planned to allow an extra 15 minutes. I spent energy worrying about this in the small hours of the night. But the day dawned only murky - I could see all the way over to Cock Hill, though its outline was blurry. I knew that the top road would be fine. Having got up extra early I had loads of time to read my notes, think my thoughts, eat my porridge, make my flask of tea, listen to a report on the radio from Tokyo featuring a family with children, struggling to know how worried to be, aftershocks swaying the lamps even as the reporter sat with them. The thickness of the fog at lunchtime sent me home the 'long way' round, which in the end only took half an hour, and no roadworks to be seen.
This is a beautiful and gentle teaching about how we actually never know what is going to happen. How worrying is entirely unrelated to the apparent object of the worry, since we almost always worry about the 'wrong' thing. Worrying is about us, and our need for control in a world that is busy carrying on regardless. I laughed at myself, with all my anxious planning and assumptions. I was worrying too about a situation with one of the boys, which by the time I came to meet him today, had changed, and the frowning young man of last week was a delighted and playful boy, who told me he'd come into school dancing!
3 comments:
Lovely. I'll try to remember this...
I was taught that putting your headlights on in thick fog is the wrong thing, as the light bounces off the fog in front of the vehicle, making it harder to see through.
And yes, worrying is pointless. Although how to stop doing it is a mystery.
Blimey, no, headlights in fog are essential as otherwise you cannot be seen by other drivers!!
In a funny kind of way worrying is rather like driving in fog, I'm now thinking!
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