I was driving home from an appointment in Sacramento. It was late afternoon and traffic was fairly heavy… not stop and go but pretty dense. I was conscious of how I was driving. Trying not to tailgate and also keeping pace with the traffic in my lane. I was feeling pretty Zen about it all, pretty self congratulatory.
A car came up on my right and pulled a little ahead. I knew he was going to pull into my lane and he did. I shook my head and eased back. Too bad everyone wasn’t as Zen and cool as me. Another car came alongside. She pulled in front and into my lane. Enough! I started gauging my distance from the car in front of me carefully. I wanted to be the perfect distance so I wasn’t following too closely and so there wouldn’t be room for others to continuously pull in front of me.
And it suddenly struck me what an ungenerous place that was to be. How miserly I was being with “my” space on the freeway. As if there was some shortage of space on the freeway and I had to grasp and hold my little portion. How different it would be if I instead practiced dana, if I was generous with the space, if when someone appeared to wish to change lanes I eased back to give them room.
I tried it and immediately noticed the change in myself. Instead of the tension of carefully calculating and holding distance to keep my space, I felt the relaxation of making the space needed available, not grudgingly but openly and freely and in the spirit of dana.