"I didn't see you!" : An excuse for vehicular homicide

A couple of weeks ago, I was riding along on my typical commute at about 4:45am, when a car passed me by in the far left lane.  (S)he gave me plenty of space, was not driving too quickly and did not swerve about in the lane.  What drew my attention to the interior of this vehicle was the rear-view mirror. Or rather the lack-there-of.  Mounted in the middle of the windshield, where the mirror would typically be situated, was a 13-inch LCD monitor, bathing both car and driver in the tantalizing glow of Video-on-Demand and vehicular homicide.

But it's sooo convenient!

Way back in May, I was hit by a car. Nothing awful, but nothing to sneeze at, either. It was the good ol' fashioned right hook, in which a motorist legally begins to pass a cyclist to the left, and then illegally and inexplicably turns right, directly into the cyclist. As I was pedaling down the shoulder (totally legal in Louisiana) of a three-lane highway, I knew I was in trouble when the car overtaking me began to slow down...the driver intended to turn into the gas station on the right. I clenched my hands, face and...well, elsewhere, bracing for the inevitable impact. It happened so fast, I don't know if I went over the hood or what (we were going 20-25 mph), but I was surprised to stand back up relatively unscathed. The bike also, was no worse for wear; in fact, the car sustained the most damage, as I apparently took the passenger-side mirror clean off. (VICTORY!!)  I did get to enjoy a pretty funky contusion on my forearm for a few days, but I was alive.

It doesn't usually 'bump' like that...

When cyclist and motorist first met in that gas station parking lot, the motorist's first questions was, of course, "Are you okay!?"  Once I replied in the affirmative, the immediate and obvious follow up response from the driver was..."I didn't see you!"

A funny concept..."I didn't see you."  How often is this truly the case? Is it more like, "I saw you, but didn't register how fast you were going?" or "I wasn't expecting you to be there?" or "I was looking at something else?"  Maybe it all just boils down to what we mean when we say we see each other...

One of my favorite films is Disney/Pixar's Wall-e.  While most obviously about the human threat to our own planet (and ultimately, ourselves), it also profoundly touches on the loss of the personal nature of relationships.  For those of you who haven't seen it, watch it.  Heck, if you HAVE seen it, watch it again.  I'll wait here.
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Well? What'd you think? I know, right? Wait, you didn't watch it just then? *sigh* Your loss.  I'll describe it for you then...

Top five, all time. Easy.

Flash-forward to a future in which the earth has been completely trashed by humans.  In fact, the earth has so fully been polluted that humans have actually abandoned her, becoming interstellar pilgrims on space cruise ships.  They've been gone for 700 years.  In space for this long, free of the earth's gravity and treating their bodies the same way they treated the earth (filling it with junk), they have devolved into sort of gigantic babies, incapable of walking as their body mass has increased and bone mass has decreased, only able to remain mobile with the help of hover chairs fitted with holographic computer touch screens that allow them to communicate with one another.  Weird, huh?  Look into the car on your left or right at the next stop light and tell me it's so far off.  Anyway, the humans never communicate directly, only through their screens.  They float blindly through life, never seeing beyond their own prodigious bellies.  It's not until the robot Wall-e finds his way into their lives that two of these characters learn to look around.  "I didn't know we had a pool!" exclaims one of the humans after being snapped back to reality.  She's being hovering through this space cruiser for her entire life and NEVER SAW THE POOL.  Later, she can be found looking out the window and contemplating, "So many stars..."  It's as if she had been living in a cave of false experiences and has only just now been exposed to reality!  It's at this point that she sees Wall-e zooming around outside the ship, and, sensing that she needs to tell someone, she reaches out to the nearest person and actually touches him on the hand to get his attention.  You get the impression that this is the first time either character has had any REAL physical human contact (which, by the way, is something of which Wall-e has dreamed for quite some time, as he's lived alone on earth for 700 years cleaning up humanity's mess).  Awesome.

Those folks who didn't or couldn't see the world around them were effectively living in a bubble.  It was a bubble of skewed if not absent or interpersonal communication.  As human being, we are intrinsically relational: we gather together to celebrate special occasions; we seek like-minded individuals for support and collaboration; we work together, we worship together and we live together.  There's myriad evidence and theories that support the human need and desire for this type of relationship.  I've even heard it said that human beings are "intrinsically relational," in that it's part of who we are to seek relationship with the "other."  That is to say, to fully realize our own humanity, we desire contact with others.

In his brilliant telling of the last days and motivation of Christopher McCandless, Into the Wild, author John Krakauer describes a young man who rejected society and his potential future to journey into the Alaskan Wilderness alone.  Inspired by the works of Jack London and Leo Tolstoy, the boy had become an idealist and romantic with little direction, ultimately starving to death within 1/4 mile of a trail that could have saved his life.  Presumably, suffering from his isolation, some of Chris' last thoughts were of relationship.  Scribbled in his copy of Doctor Zhivago were the words "Happiness on real when shared."  We CAN find a type of pleasure through individual pursuits; we DO seek peace by turning inwards at times; but, it's only through relationship that peace and pleasure can blossom into real happiness.

What then, does "seeing" have to do with relationship?  In English, the word "see" means more that to visually recognize.  We can "look" and we can "understand."  Think about how when someone explains something to you that was previously a mystery and you exclaim, "O, I see!"  "Seeing" is more than just looking.  We can go through our entire lives "looking" and interacting with our environment, but until we fully understand what we are looking at, we are blind to the reality.  Socrates, essentially the father of Western thought, famously stated, "The unexamined life is not worth living."  What he meant was looking deeper.  He meant looking beyond your day-to-day experience, looking beyond what we've always been told, looking beyond that screen in front of our face (in the case of the humans in Wall-e, and heck, any one of who use our cell phone as third eye, constantly looking at something that isn't truly present, but to us for some reason SEEMS more real, or important), looking for the TRUTH, not just  appearances.

How often to we "look" at one another and not "see" one another?  We visually detect another human being in front of us, but we've lost the ability to understand and truly process WHO this person is.  Maybe it's because of how we communicate - we text, we Facebook, we email (all wonderful and powerful tools to be sure!).  But when human beings are limited in such a way, when we're not able to "see" one another, we lose the ability to "perceive" one another.

There's ALOT more to be said here, but it's going to have to wait until another time...REALITY doesn't wait for you to finish blogging.