MOLI VIEW™

I was on my way to my office a few days ago, thinking about going to the bag store on Broadway and 10^th Street while crossing the street. A few folks were ahead of me when a taxi horn started blaring. I jumped out of my skin because the taxi was so close to hitting me before it suddenly stopped. Then I was pissed off. We had the signal to cross and the taxi was making a right turn but needed to yield to pedestrians. I turned around to catch the driver's eye as he rolled down the window to yell at me, I'm sure. I shouted, with conviction, "Aw, be nice!"

He looked at me and grimaced, then his passengers — having expected a fight — looked from him to me. He said nothing, but tilted his head and gave me a funny look. And then, I turned around to walk away. And, besides a few comments from the other pedestrians to me like, "He's crazy!" and "What was he doing?", that was the end of that. No name-calling, no cursing, no getting out of the taxi swinging a baseball bat — believe me, I've seen that happen more than once. I assume the driver then made his right turn down East 11th Street, and hopefully cooled his jets before he made his next right turn. Me? I continued down the block and bought a bright red messenger bag.

I suppose what I just described can be seen as one of the simplest forms of disputes, but wouldn't it be a relief if we could resolve more things in that way? Simply put, when confronted by conflict, if we ask one another for a change of heart, and then we move on, we may find that a peaceful resolution is just around the corner, so to speak.

Previous Page  1  2  Next Page