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The Moral High Ground is Not as Stable as it Seems
My husband and I were walking in our neighborhood when a car came racing by. I estimate the driver was going 10 miles over the speed limit. There was a blind curve coming up, and I’d seen some kids on bikes earlier, so without thinking, I jabbed my finger in his direction to tell him to slow down. He looked right at me when I did it.
“Great,” I thought. “Now he’s going to come back and beat me up.”
I imagined what I’d say if he circled the block, jumped out of his car, and raged toward me. Everyone is so on edge right now; it wasn’t hard to believe that could happen. I knew I’d start with a sincere apology. “I’m sorry. That was really rude of me to point at you that way, it’s just that you were going fast and there are kids on bikes and I didn’t know how else to get your attention.” My hope of course, was that he’d accept my apology, admit his error, and drive off at a safer speed, but I sort of doubted that’s how it would go down.
So, if I knew it was a risk to try to correct his behavior, why did I do it? Well, partly out of concern for the safety of the kids in our neighborhood, that’s true. But also, partly because in a world that lately feels out of my control, I probably just wanted to feel for a moment like I had some sway. In my own little corner of the world, I felt justified in being judge, jury…
