No one can accuse me, once I get started on a metaphor, of giving it short shrift. (Have I mentioned before that short shrift comes from the ancient term “shrift” or the penance given to a confessing death row inmate? Since in the bad old days the sentence—usually hanging—was carried out almost immediately, the prisoner had, of necessity, a short shrift, or penance. Every cloud has a silver lining, no? Give the phrase a couple hundred years and it has come to mean “give cursory/little/no attention or consideration to.”)

Back to the metaphor (no one can accuse me of staying slavishly on topic). Everyone recognizes the one about life as a journey and all of us merely travelers. It should, I decided,  be expanded to an analogy. Add more body, more polish, more power, maybe a customized grille.
We may all be traveling the highway of life together, but most of those on the road with us will remain strangers. We barely glance their direction. Some, of course, catch our eye because they are fast and shiny, hurtling down the express lane. Some we watch limp to the shoulder hoping for roadside assistance, and we’re glad we aren’t them.

Some are fresh from the car wash and glistening in the sun. Some may be freshly clean, but the shine is camouflaged by a recent spray of mud and muck. A tune up lets even the most economy-ranked vehicles hit on all cylinders and make good time. For awhile. Soon comes a laborious lurching from one service station or rest stop to the next. Those with new tires guaranteeing 40,000 more miles learn that tires can sadly expire before the warranty does. The thing is, we are all so concentrated on our own journey, we don’t know what is going on with theirs. Except what we see—or think we see.

We watch our speedometer and odometer and check engine light. When we aren’t scanning the dashboard we’re watching the rearview mirror to see who might be going faster than us, taking up more lane space then seems fair, who is getting caught by their misdeeds and who isn’t. Which vehicles do we want to avoid, or whose slipstream can we take advantage of?

But the shiny vehicle speeding in the passing lane may crash just around the bend, or limp along on a blown tire, or get in trouble with authorities because so much attention is paid to shiny speeding vehicles. The rusting jalopy we passed miles back gets a temporary engine boost and zips in and around everyone else for miles and miles before falling back to the far right lane with everyone honking in annoyance. Expensive conveyances don’t last forever. No matter how well they are maintained. Everyone traveling alongside us needs maintenance, needs to slow down or stop at signs of trouble or danger, runs out of gas. Then we move to the limp lane.

No one stays in the express lane, at least not for long.
We’re all limping.
We may not see our counselor, our hometown hero, our mentor limp because they are too far ahead or behind us.
But it will happen.
We all need to slow down. Let others in ahead of us, give roadside assistance, be patient with the old, and the slow and the damaged. Avoid envying those racing in the express lane, flying along the passing lane, because the speed is impossible to maintain.

We all came from the same place.
We’re all on the same road.
We’ll eventually get where we are going, whether we want or not. Haste and road rage and rudeness won’t make life’s journey any better.
Only cooperation and kindness can do that.
Let’s limp together.