I shouldn't celebrate a traffic jam, but I'm going to anyway. I knew when I approached downtown Syracuse yesterday that it was going to be slow. I wasn't listening to the radio this morning (a choice for quiet over noise) when I noticed all the cars ahead were stopped. In my rearview mirror, I saw a line of cop cars trying to get through all the static metal and wheels behind me. I witnessed cars parting the pavement sea so that these vehicles could get through. Soon after, ambulances came, and finally fire trucks. Each time, cars shifted to make way for the emergency and I was impressed and how instinctively people reacted.
When I finally came to the source of the "pause," it was a fender bender that took up two lanes. Stuck in rubbernecking land, I couldn't help but be thankful it wasn't me. We are such insects. All traffic is bug-traffic. We are busy busy busy all the time, and wasps always return to their work know they have more busy things to do. They don't sit still for a mishap or two. In fact, this summer, I sprayed a few wasps who nested outside my back door and I watched them gag (with guilt) outside their hives. Even so, the other wasps carried on. They paced around the dead wasps for a couple of seconds, tapping them with their antennas, but then they hit the accelerator again.
It is nature. Does it make sense? Not really. But motion is survival and highways are our modern arteries. We flow.
Flow we must.
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