Did My Life Make a Difference?

I think that is a common question. As I get older (74 and ticking!), I start to wonder if it mattered that I lived. Did I do anything that made someone else’s life better?

One of the reasons that I first started publishing on StoryStar was my desire to share my thoughts about being of help to others. I laid awake one night shortly after I discovered StoryStar thinking about my story ‘Be The Light’ and decided that I had almost a responsibility to share those ideas, to try to make the world a kinder, better place. It was the first story that I started writing but not the first I published. I also wanted to write stories about my Messengers who had positive themes and some of those were ready first.

All of that preamble info was to reinforce that I have a desire to have made a difference in at least a few lives before my time is up. Maybe my stories might make someone decide to do something to help others.

Earlier the day that I am writing this, I’m pretty sure I helped some people that I will never meet and who will never know that I existed, but who ate dinner with their family and friends because of a decision that I made out of habit to slow down instead of speed up while driving. I know that seems a little pretentious, but I do think that it is true, and maybe you will too, after you finish this story.

I was driving on Hwy 161 in Dallas which is one of the many four lane freeways with a 60 to 70 mph speed limit common in the area. We have lots of cars around here and they all seem to always be in the wrong place!

I’m a pretty active driver. We used to call it defensive driving, but I don’t think many people these days remember that term. Anyway, I tend to notice what is happening around me, especially movement.

When I caught sight out of the corner of my eye of the driver in lane one, the far left lane which we call the fast lane, suddenly making odd movements I instinctively slowed down. I thought in the back of my mind that the driver had intended to change lanes, but when they started to the right, they noticed at the last moment that there was another car in the way and must have pulled back. I was in lane three from the left and about even with these two cars, doing the speed limit as they were slowly passing. The car in lane two sped up and pulled away.

Suddenly the driver in lane one started jerking their wheel back and forth rapidly making their car rock, but they were still continuing down their lane at 70 mph. My habit/instinct is to slow things down when someone is doing something odd or an accident looks imminent, so I started breaking, causing the cars behind me to do the same. I wanted to give the driver in trouble room if they needed it. I could have just gone on and left the problem behind. They were still in control of their car after what seemed like ten to fifteen seconds, but they were still jerking the wheel, for some unknown reason.

I slowed more so they would be in front of my position, just in case, and sure enough they finally lost it and wrenched their steering and popped two lanes over to be right in front of me, about three feet ahead. Fortunately, I was already slowing, and my Audi has really good brakes. Everyone on the freeway got stopped and no one hit anybody. Whew!!

After a few moments, and a few deep breaths, the other driver pulled over to the edge, a couple of other cars pulled over to commensurate, and the rest of us went on about our day.

It was only later when I was going over the incident in my head that I realized that, if I had not chosen slowing down rather than just going past them, they would not have had the room to swerve across lanes. They would probably have struck other cars at 70 mph and people could have been seriously injured or killed in a multiple car accident.

I’m chalking this one up that I made a difference. We all have those moments when a decision that we make can help others in ways that we will never know. Look for those moments and make doing the right thing a habit.