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As in my state of Mass there are often visitors from places who have no round-abouts, I often give way when these perplexed folks get stymied and stuck in one.

On my way home for lunch a few days prior to 9/11, I came across such a situation. In a white van with jersey plates was the small head and distressed face of muhamad atta, stressing out.. in the rotary. I was in the right of way he blocking traffic and clearly unfamiliar with it and what to do. I caught his attention and with a calmness gave him a look to indicate I am allowing his passage. It struck me as he simply took it  seemingly without a trace of human like response or even a tiny bit of gratitude but a look of deep intensity I would not understand until later. That night I had a dream, I rarely remember them, where somehow he was there urging me to go to the tallest building I could find.. and wait there. And then of course 9/11 the next day or so. Some post 9/11 time went by before the news of an investigation on a white van in the area with old style New Jersey plates had been connected to planning the airport departures from Boston. Clearly the plight of peoples subjected can lead to horrible ends and we saw such a thing.

As traffic analogies find their way into therapists offices and water cooler conversations the one common denominator is many times at least anger and reading an action by someone that may not be in fact how it appears. We cannot dispute the horrors that occur daily on our planet that begin with these types of assumptions. We also cannot deny that we have it more than very good compared to most of the worlds population in many ways. If we can take way from 9/11 a hard sobering lesson we are lucky not to be so traumatized personally by knowing a person who perished on 9/11 or thereafter but close enough to feel their pains in empathy.

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