I got to thinking about traffic lights today when I noticed myself talking to a green light at a crowded intersection. Maybe you know what I mean. “Just stay green, stay green,” I chanted internally as I entered the intersection and “Thank you, thank you!” as my car slipped through just as the light was turning yellow. I confess that I talk to street lights all the time. It may go back to a scene from an independent film I saw years ago in which a young girl was riding along in a car with a kind man, a mentor of sorts, someone who was opening the world of possibilitiy to her. I don’t much remember the plot details, but I’ll never forget the game she invented as they drove along. At every intersection they approached down a long, wide, city street, the stoplight was red, but when the young heroine blew hard at the light, she replaced it, like magic, with green. And, of course, as this unlikely duo drove down that long boulevard, the smile on her young face grew brighter and brighter until she absolutely glowed.
We humans like cause and effect. We like flipping the light switch on the wall and having the dark entryway fill up with light. We like shaking the dogfood bag and hearing all four feet thump to the floor off the forbidden sofa and trot into the kitchen. We like pulling open the tivak envelope that the cloth shopping bag arrives in after we’ve sent in the check to the address on the back of the cereal box. When the rain comes down in torrents in the early spring, we like knowing that the dry brown lawn will eventually turn green.
And some of us blow at streetlights, because we love feeling that burst of delight when we change stop to go, no to yes.
But life is rarely that predictable, at least not that kind of predictable, and it doesn’t feel like a game when we walk into a wall of resistance or receive devastating news. When no amount of positive thinking can change stop to go, no to yes, not even blowing at streetlights feels like a game. And we’ll stay curled up on the sofa, thank you very much, no matter what treats you might have for us. I know.
But maybe if we’re lucky some kind and generous soul pulls into our metaphorical driveway and invites us out for a ride, a rambling conversation with no particular destination, except for a change of scenery. And she listens to us as we tell the story of a door that just closed for good, the promise of a future that will never arrive. And she listens to our silence that is too dense for words.
Its a long ride. In between the silences there are deeper silences still. But the scenery is changing and we get a little curious about where we are. We begin to notice the landscape, we open the window to feel the breeze on our face. It begins to dry the tears from our cheeks. “ Would you like to drive a little?” she asks, and we do. So she pulls over and we switch places. We drive and she navigates. We begin to smile.
“At the next light, take a right,” she tells us. So we slow down as we approach the intersection, but then we begin to speed up, and without even thinking we look right up at the stoplight and hear ourselves saying, “Just stay green. Stay green!”
And we do, at least for now.
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