The Others #006

Insights from a morning drive

Today, like every morning I was driving my children to school.

I live in Hong Kong. And what always amazes me about Hong Kong is how lively it is. You go out to the streets and the streets are full of people. They are full of activity, things happening, people going about their lives.

I remember when I was living in Germany: it was not like this at all. Where I lived, in a small town that was very quiet and peaceful, you could go to the town centre at particular times and it would be completely empty. While here in Hong Kong, even the smallest village street is full of people. Something is always going on. This can be nice, but it can also come with problems.

Today, like every other morning, I drove my children to school. Just as I start the car to get underway, there is a group of children crossing in front of me, totally oblivious to the fact that there's a car there that wants to go somewhere. Next, there were dogs jumping around the carpark, and then we drive out and there's this man who was pushing the big garbage can, the garbage container on wheels, and he is pushing this thing to the garbage collection point. And it is huge, and it's blocking the street, and this man seems to be enjoying it. He's just pushing as slowly and as much in the middle of the street as he possibly can. And behind him, the cars are queuing up, and then you finally reach the street and you can overtake this guy, and then you want to turn. But you cannot turn, because there is a school bus standing there and it is blocking the street. You manage, finally, the school bus leaves. Next thing is a taxi standing in the way and somebody is getting on, a minibus waiting for passengers, two bikes riding side by side, blocking the whole lane, and on the other side, on the opposite lane, there are trucks coming, so you cannot overtake the bikes.

It’s like a computer game. Like playing one of these computer games in the 80s, where you have to cross the street and there was a frog or something crossing the street and all kinds of crazy vehicles coming from right and left trying to kill you.

So once again, like every morning, I was driving along these chaotic streets, and I remembered what Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor from 2000 years ago, had said. In his diary, he reflected on situations like this. He wrote:

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and sourly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and I have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own, not of the same blood and birth, but of the same mind, and possessing an equal share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness, nor can I feel angry at my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes. Like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.

You know, he was an emperor of Rome. He didn't need to say this. He could have anybody he wanted imprisoned or executed. He could have his guards walk in front of him, pushing people away and making way for him. But he did not. He lived in this world of other humans, and he engaged with it. And he understood that even as the Emperor of Rome, he was not different from any other person. We all, he says, possess the same share of the divine.

And he says another thing that is relevant to us. He says: we all work together like hands and feet, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower, like our two eyes. And this is what I realized this morning when I was taking the car, and when I was meeting all these people who blocked my way.

I realized that these children that are standing in my way when I try to drive out of my parking spot, these are the same like the children I'm transporting at the back of my car. They go to the same school. They are the same kind of human being. The dogs that block my way and jump around the car are the samedogs that keep me safe at night. When this man with the garbage container is blocking my way, the garbage in there, in this container, is my garbage. He is bringing that away. He is bringing away the garbage that I created.

When the school bus is stopping at the corner, it's the same school bus that two years ago took my children to school. Now I'm driving them. But this school bus is taking other children to school, and these are just the same as my children.

All these are not strangers. All these people are me. They are the people who are part of my family, the people who concern me, the people who I love and who do exactly the same things. At this moment, it happens to be someone else, but there is no real difference. It could be me, it could be my family, and it is my garbage that is blocking everyone’s way in the morning.

So let us remember this this dawn. Whenever we meet people who annoy us, who block our way, who we think should go away and let us do our thing, let us remember that we are all together here, and that we need these other people in order to be able to have the lives we have.

We need these people. We need all these others doing their thing. Because if they don't, then we cannot live. Somebody is responsible for putting the water into our water tap. Somebody is, at this moment, taking care that the electricity is coming out of the sockets in our houses. Somebody is taking care that the traffic lights work. All these people are there to make our lives possible.

Thank you and see you tomorrow.