I’m driving back to my office from lunch today, drifting slowly through my sun-drenched neighborhood.  I approach a giant flat bed truck partially blocking the roadway in the process of off-loading paver stones for a new pool deck and driveway.  All over this tiny lakeside settlement, beautiful new homes are sprouting like grins on children’s faces.  Property values are soaring.  It’s a happy place.  The sky is blue.  The clouds are white.  The grass is green.  A blaring car horn and a roaring muscle car engine break my reverie.  My rear-view mirror is filled hot hostility.  Inches from my bumper idles an ancient souped up Corvette in full “shade tree mechanic” glory with peeling multi-hued paint and a hood cowl like a dragster .  It’s driver looks straight out of a “Mr Evil” sci-fantasy with heavy beard and matching dirty denim jacket, clearly in no mood for my rubbernecking.  Peeling around me through the neighbor’s grass, he throws me a special hand gesture.  I’m not sure what to make of it as he rockets angrily by in a blur.

I felt my own anger rising in response, a kind of defensive reaction with tinges of embarrassment for him and a bucket full of self righteousness of my own.  I’d felt the “macho thrust”, the intimidation.  My ego, fully inflamed. “Who the hell are you?”, I thought.  “Go f**k yourself!”,  I wanted to say.  I briefly considered following him, upping the harassment ante, but after playing out the fantasy, i.e. of me getting my head bloodied on the pavement in the hot sun, just blocks from home, I moseyed on down my street.  I hoped we wouldn’t meet again.  I hoped he didn’t get a clear look at my vanity license plate.

I often wonder about the strange brew of external context and internal disposition that leaves us at the mercy of getting “hijacked”, a term long used by researchers of emotional intelligence to describe being carried away by excess emotion.  Partly a highly stressful physical reaction and a run-a-way emotional response, it has been proven to be life-shortening and even life-threatening.  What goes on inside us?  How does my environment affect my ability to “stay cool” under pressure.  This “hijack” is the stuff of “road rage” and snap decisions, of “over the top” reactions and behavior that can, in an instant, change lives forever.  University of Wyoming entomologist Jeff Lockwood, in a fascinating “Radio Lab” interview on his current research and the behavior of Australian crickets comments dryly: “violence is the baseline strategy for most encounters between, and indeed within, species.”  Who among us has not waited in a bank or grocery line and never felt the hot rush of anger and hostility as those ahead of us fumbled or took more than a few moments of extra time?  But maybe we don’t have to be such slaves to our reactions.  What if we could quickly employ coping strategies that would not only protect our neighbor from us, but nourish our own emotional welfare as well?  Perhaps there are skills we can learn, attitudes we can adopt that can bring peace to us personally, and between ourselves and our fellow humans.  “Civilization is the intelligent management of human emotion” said the late Jim Rohn, a wise philosopher and revered California businessman.  “Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you must take responsibility for forming” says Rohn.  Next blog, we’ll take a closer look at the elements of special kind of character-building intelligence needed for thriving in a more civilized world.

John