A PSA to Left Lane Drivers

Nov 3

I realized that if I were to die in a few short minutes, one of the most avid statements I would want shared with the rest of society…

If you are going the speed limit or severely below it, get the F*CK out of the passing lane!

For a long time I've asked myself: if I could leave one message to the masses in this lifetime before I died, what would it be?

Resoundingly, again and again, I return to this public service announcement:

"If you are going the speed limit or severely below it, get the F*CK out of the passing lane!!!!!!!!!"

Have you seen this happen? Long trails of traffic stagnated behind a lollygagging car blocking miles of a highway for no reason?

What is this ABOUT?!

To do such a thing, I postulate you must be one of two things:

1) Totally unconscious of how much inconvenience you are causing other people.

2) Totally aware but not giving a F*CK about how you are effecting those around you.

As a meditation teacher and subtle activist, the urgency to encourage people to either WAKE UP or GIVE A SH*T overwhelms me in these moments.

Either way, my patience and compassion is most certainly tested in traffic.

Driving across Columbus is absolutely a time for me to attempt to live my practices of kindness and mindfulness.

HA!

(Better worded: it SHOULD be the time for me to attempt to live my practices of kindness and mindfulness.)

And this is what I love about life: the balance of theory and practice.

Of course comes my Mother: "I am here to remind you of your words!"

When I'm angry at the car in front of me, so slow and timid.

When I was wondering what to do for a wedding cake: "Even if it's a little more money, isn't that what you always talk about? Supporting other small business owners and supporting real people?"

As I've been plunging into more material about being an entrepreneur and expert in various industries, I kept reading again and again this notion of people feeling like "frauds."

Though I had never considered this or had these insecurities myself, by the sheer frequency of seeing this again and again, I finally had a huge dawning moment.

In fact, one of the most difficult aspects of claiming my work in the world was that it was so inherently personal. To be a nonfiction writer is to reveal in the truth—good, bad, and ugly. To dive into what is.

My biggest challenge to conquer was internal. How could I claim myself as a narrator when I was so damn flawed and imperfect?

A totally overdramatized incident over something so small totally flipped me on my head.

As a social media manager, I had been posting for many different companies. One time, I used a picture of a new teacher that she had posted: a simple picture of herself on a wood floor with a white wall.

Thinking absolutely nothing of it, I used her picture and posted the next day's yoga classes.

In lieu of contacting me and letting me know of their deep personal anguish over my small mistake, I left my house and drove to the quiet and quaint yoga studio I had been teaching at for years: every Thursday I would arrive thirty minutes before my students to a totally empty studio and await for my class to trickle in.

Instead, I stepped out of my car and checked my phone on the way to the studio. I stood still for a second as I saw in shock: another studio in town had screenshotted the picture I had posted, along with a LONG slew of paragraphs bashing not only my studio, but their social media manager (myself) along with a huge amount of innacurate information, how could a "multi-millionaire" studio (ha!) dare take a picture taken in his precious studio and post to their account?!?!?!

I stood still on the sidewalk and admit I became quite pissed off. What an jerk! I thought.

In years of posting pictures of students and teachers, never had I assumed that this one photo in such a non-identifying location would get such a pissed off reaction and rise out of someone.

Though I had heard hilarious rumors of this studio owner, I had no idea who they were in person.

A few seconds later, I would find out.

I opened the door to the studio that I'd walked into for years in silence and peace to find a man flinging his hands in the air and yelling at one of my beloved co-workers.

As I stepped into the studio, surprised to find anywhere there at all, nontheless a dramatic scene of such magnitude, I quickly put two and two together, pointed to my cell phone and said incredously, "Was this you?!"

As someone who is genuinely disgusted by those who create petty and unnecessary drama for the sheer hell of it, combined with my quick temper, in a matter of several heated moments I managed to explicitly tell this man he was being an asshole.

He asked my name and promised he would get me fired.

I called my boss to tell her what had quickly and unexpectedly occurred. She was very understanding and told me to apologize if I genuintely felt sorry for what I said.

I could not find it in me to reach out to this man.

I had just officially started my company, Peace to the People LLC.

At last I understood what these people meant about being a fraud!

What I hypocrite I was, I thought! Here I was clamoring on about cultivating a "kind and mindful culture" and here I was calling a perfect stranger an asshole!

Though not particularly proud of my reaction and response to this small encounter of my life, it was a huge relief to me after bothering me greatly for many months.

Though I am continuing to build my business and brand around the ideals of kindness, mindfulness, and collaboration, I am no longer holding myself to a standard of perfection.

To own being a narrator and the founder of my company, I've had to navigate this path of not wanting to project myself on a pedestal to people.

I am most certainly NOT perfect, and though my intention is to be a kind and mindful person, sometimes I too encounter people that set me off.

Sometimes I flash my bad side too, and though I'm not trying to completely write off my actions, I'm also not trying to continually beat myself up for making a mistake.

And stubborn as they come, I still haven't made the time to reach out and apologize to this man, because deep down, a rebellouis side of myself is absolutely not sorry.

Whatever that man exuded is what I long to eracidate: shitty attitudes and piss poor treatment of others.

Yet who was I?

Ah, life and it's paradoxical lessons.

I think what I'm discovering is that I can be a public figure while still being imperfect. And to a degree, I suspect even the best of us are at times a tad hypocritical.

And not to dismiss our flaws and mistakes, but to understand that we are all just people who sometimes don't make the perfect decisions in the moment…

To me, it's about practicing what we preach, or trying to the best of ourabilities.

Or if you're like me, perhaps the lesson is to at least strongly see and acknowledge when you have veered off path and either apologize, or conciously vow to do your best next time you run into a heated or unexpected encounter.

The moral of this story? I'm still the founder of Peace to the People and want to contribute peace, wellness, and understanding to as many people as possible.

That being said, I'm nowhere near perfect, so take what I say with a grain of salt and know I am doing my best and will cheer you on as you do the same.

To help people is not to be perfect. To be human is not to be perfect.

Mainly I write with the burning question in mind: if millions could read my words, what would I want them to read?

One of the very first PSA's that comes to mind is this:

If you are going the speed limit or slightly below, get the f*ck out of the left lane.

Your unconsciousness is literally clogging the entire effing freeway for absolutely no reason other than the fact that you are:

A) Unaware that you are causing a problem for many others.

B) Stubbornly not giving AF that you are causing a problem for many others.

To the left lane cloggers of the globe, this one's for you!

Avidya in Sanskrit / yoga speak boils down to "ignorance."

As a first generation college graduate who grew up on the outskirts of a rural Ohio town smack dab in the middle of country culture—cornfields, cotton ball clouds, and fields full of cows—I get that being called "ignorant" is a slur most of us don't want slung at us.

So I prefer to use the word "unaware" instead.

You don't know what you don't know.

And if you do know, well now you're just being a jerk.

I believe we all need to take accountability for our actions.

To make this possible, several doses of self-inquiry are required, but first, we must be awake.

Most all of us can relate to occasionally living life on auto-pilot, going through the motions without emotion, a zombie-numb state of sluggishness and apathy.

And it's okay if we fall (we're human, after all) but we must keep getting back up and caring about something—our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of our loved ones, the wellbeing of our world.

We can all save the world, little bits at a time, day by day dropping drips of kindness and compassion into the cosmic well of cause and effect.