Don’t Step on Faith
Do you remember all the things you learned in elementary school? I doubt many people past their teens do. Once school is done, most people do not have much reason to know basic but useless facts like the capitals of all 50 states and the major components of a living cell. Everything we learned back then isn’t useless now, but people tend to remember the important stuff . . . right?
One of the earliest “life lessons” that was repeatedly imprinted into my memory was “look both ways before you cross the street.” It seems so basic – a four-year-old could tell you what to do before you cross the street. Well, apparently everyone does not know
What a four-year-old knows. Just about every day that I ride my bike through the city, I come across people who step off the curb without looking in any direction that traffic might be coming from. Some keep their eyes fixed straight ahead – maybe they trust their lives to traffic lights, I mean, everyone obeys traffic laws, right? Other people keep there heads down the whole time. I guess they see it as a leap (step?) of faith.
There are times when an observer might not be able to tell that I looked before crossing the street even though I did do it, so I can accept that I’m not always able to tell when someone looked. The thing is, I know these people didn’t look. Why else would they step off the curb, directly into the path of my bike when I’m flying down the street and they have a red light? A lot of times when this happens, I’ll slow down and stop with less than a foot of space between my front tire and the person, and they still won’t know I’m there. Sometimes, I’ll modify my path so that I pass in front of them with ample clearance, but they will still jump in surprise.
If people care so little about their health and well-being, they should at least find neater, more effective means of ending it all. I don’t have any statistics, but I can confidently assure you that jumping in front of a moving bike is not likely to lead to a successful suicide. If you’re not trying to die, why even take that step of faith?
