Today I saw something rare. There is a “Zone 30” road nearby. It means you can only go 30 kilometres per hour. Of course many don’t care and go faster, so the city sometimes puts obstacles on such a road to physically enforce slow driving.

In this case the road was like a zig zag. Every 50 meters or so one side of the road was removed. Then there was a bush there or even a tree. The sides would alternate and the effect would be that the drivers would have to slow down to navigate around the obstacles. And if a car approached from the opposite direction it would be more difficult to pass. One car had to yield.

And usually this works well but not today.

Two drives stood in such a narrow spot. The cars faced each other and none of them wanted to move. Behind each a queue of other cars had formed. Four or five on each side.

Rarely someone honked. It was unusually quiet. Everyone was waiting for something. Watching. Pedestrians waited and looked, too. (I was one.)

I assume one driver must have believed he has the right of way because the obstacle was on the other side. And the other believed the opposite, because he had reached the narrow spot first and therefore he was entitled to be allowed through.

None of them wanted to let the other one pass.

The situation lasted for minutes. Perhaps five.

It was very strange. No shouting, no car horn. Except perhaps from some driver in the queue.

Someone walked over and tried to convince one of the drivers to back off. He was first ignored and then eventually he was calmly told something. I suppose it was that driver’s version of why the other must move.

It was completely unclear if this was a dangerous situation. Or if it was a funny situation. No hints. Nobody was giving anything away. It could have been a Youtube prank and all about the reactions of the bystanders, as far as I could tell.

Perhaps this was a good example of why it’s better that we can’t have guns in Europe like they do in America. Who knows what could happen if they had revolvers in their glove boxes.

Perhaps it was a very moving, human moment.

If yes then it was moving on a different level, though. You wouldn’t feel it in your stomach. It was mentally moving.

It was about remembering something about ourselves.

Us people, I mean.

We all had stressful days. Perhaps the familiy annoyed us. Perhaps we messed up at work. Perhaps two or three discouraging things happened on the same day. Life is like that sometimes.

Perhaps “life like that” happened to both drivers. Perhaps they looked at the face behind the windshield in front of them and instantly recognized this was the case.

This wasn’t a stand off of status. It was not in order to settle who the stronger, higher value man is. No, perhaps this was about understanding. About realizing again that we are all connected by the shared fate of being human.

We’re all colleagues. We’re all friends. On some level at least.

From time to time, we all feel captured. From time to time, we feel ecstatic. And sometimes we are afraid, because we remember that bad things will happen. After all, they will. That is one hundred percent certain. To each one of us. So each one is us. In some way.

Perhaps this was it.

The bystanders must have felt it, too. I know I felt something else than humor, worry or annoyance.

It might even have been a moment in which we briefly left the matrix.

Not angry. Not in need of venting or domination. Or comment. We were just outside of it for a minute.

Just breathing.

And then, someone came over and said something, this time to the other driver. I think it was a pizza delivery man.

It worked. The car finally moved and backed off a bit. Maybe half a car length. The other just passed calmly. I saw the face of the driver who passed. He looked rather relaxed. Thoughtful perhaps.

Perhaps he remembered about the matrix.

In my mind, he did.