Home arrow Ezine arrow Ezine Artciles arrow Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic Print E-mail
‘We all know that sinking feeling. You’re merrily (or busily) cruising down the highway on your way to an important meeting, or on your way from something else equally important, to your child’s school or home to cook dinner, feed the cat, pay the cleaning lady, collect the dry cleaning, and so on, when you find yourself having to slow down for the cars in front and then you have to slow down some more and too soon you have to stop completely. It’s gridlock. There is nowhere else for you to go. You are stuck behind a line of cars, inching forward at a snail’s pace and spewing poisonous fumes into the air around you,’ says Rona Marx.

Your mind doesn’t want to believe this and you go into denial for a few seconds, while your body throws stress butterflies around in your stomach and your soul observes quietly how you’re going to handle this one.

So there I was. Radio chatter interrupted my thoughts to announce that there had been a disastrous accident on one of Jozi’s busiest highways but it was way too late for me to do anything about it. I felt very little in my very little car boxed in by huge trucks, lorries, carriers and bakkies on all sides.

The smooth drivers in their smooth shiny sedans around me started looking frazzled and less-than-cool. It takes us a seemingly huge effort to collectively inch forward at about two metres every 20 minutes. We are on a stretch of highway where there is nowhere to turn around, no off-ramp offering any escape. All we can do is sit and wait and inch forward and breathe in fumes. I am intensely frustrated. I really, really don’t want to be here – stuck. In the traffic.

As I observe the reaction in my body, I am surprised by the intensity of feeling pushing up from my solar plexus through my chest. My mind is swearing. So, I sit with it. I allow these intense feelings to bubble up in waves, and I sit with it.

In the meantime, I take a good look around at the people in the vehicles stuck in this traffic jam with me. Who are they? Where are they going? Are they happy, whole beings, or do they aimlessly drag themselves through life, trying their best to get by and completely oblivious to their beautiful souls – always serene, always at peace, always love?

I turn to myself again and the frustration has subsided somewhat. Enough for me to start thinking: so, I’m stuck here for whatever reason. Is there something to learn? Is there an awareness to be experienced here?

I turn the radio off and my higher consciousness steps forward after a few moments of contemplation with a simple lesson: ‘Look at where you are’. This doesn’t sound or feel very profound to me and my irritation levels increase by a few margins, but I think deep and hard about this anyway. Besides, there is nothing else for me to do at this moment.

‘I look around outside the car and I notice the other people. The beautiful people that make up this Rainbow Nation – most of us probably don’t care about politics or struggles or ideologies. All we want is to get on with our lives and make the best of what we need to do and provide for our families. Right, got it,’ says Rona Marx ( pictured above).

Next, I look further afield to the familiar buildings, trees and grass that constitutes the landscape of this city that we have created. I notice details. I see birds flying and pigeons nesting on dangerous ledges of tall buildings – adapting to their environment, still able to do what pigeons do in less-than-ideal-for-pigeons circumstances. I see a beautiful little yellow flower growing out of a crack in the shoulder of the highway. Doing its best to be a beautiful little flower right there in the concrete and the nothingness. Nothing more and nothing less. It is not trying to be a rose or a tree. Nobody really notices, but that doesn’t matter. It is what it is meant to be. Right. Lesson grasped.

But there is more. I can feel it sitting deep down in my chest.  I shift my focus to my own world. I am in a very real situation right now where I feel very much stuck. I have been stuck here for two years. There are some external circumstances that I have no control over. I try very hard every day to bear with it and make the best of where I am in my life right now and I know that this, too, shall pass, and I go with the flow and I know the lessons learnt have been precious and manifold; but sometimes, the frustration of it all gets too much for me and I ask myself questions like: ‘what is it that I am not seeing clearly?’ Is there something else I can do to change this situation that I have overlooked? Am I being too hard on myself and the other people involved in this situation? Is there a sane way out of this?

I regularly do letting-go rituals under the full moon and I manifest and I pray and I talk to my guides. And I get the same answer, but I don’t want to believe it. Trust in divine timing. All will be as it needs to be when it is the right time. AAAaarrrggghhhhh - so frustrating.

And then I realise what I can learn from being stuck here in this traffic and this frustration on this highway: I am stuck, yes. I am inching forward at a snail’s pace, yes. Can I do anything else about it? No. Will I be stuck here in this car for more than a few hours? No. Do I have choices? Yes – I can leave the car and start walking, but that would not really serve me.

What else can I do? I can wait here and try to stay present and be in this moment of frustration, because it is all part of this human experience and this reality that we live in. I will still reach my destination, although I may be very ‘late’ in human terms. There may be reasons for that. There may not. I will have learnt to experience the frustrated part of my human-ness.

In the bigger picture, I can continue to wait it out in the stuck-ness of my life. Although painful, I can still appreciate the beauty of autumn in Jozi. I can joke and laugh along with the now-familiar car guards at my local shopping centre – they, too, just trying to cope with their own individual circumstances and experiencing the most out of every day. I can be grateful and joyful about my good health; and the good health of my child and my family. I can rejoice along with my friends in small victories. I can honour and enjoy my beautiful autumn garden. I can share and connect with my customers.
I can embrace being human and all that it offers. I can be whole, even if my outer circumstances feel incomplete. I can accept.It is just the way it is. And therein lies my Peace.

Rona Marx is a lightworker and healer, writer and poet. She is inspired to make a difference in her clients’ lives through spiritual teaching and guidance. She facilitates her clients’ spiritual transformation to happiness and peace in individual sessions. She can be contacted on 082 561 6038 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]