Traffic was stopped. Complete standstill. He'd been sitting there for twenty minutes.
Usually this would make him insane. Road rage. Cursing. Checking Waze constantly. Spiraling about being late.
But today, for some reason, he just... didn't.
He turned off the podcast. Rolled down the window. And just sat there.
The sun was setting. Orange and pink. He hadn't noticed it until now.
Some bird was singing in a tree next to the highway. High and clear. Beautiful, actually.
The guy in the car next to him was singing along to something. Head bobbing. Completely lost in it. Happy.
And he realized something. Nothing about the situation had changed. Still stuck in traffic. Still going to be late.
But he wasn't suffering anymore.
Suffering wasn't the traffic. Suffering was his resistance to the traffic. His story about how it shouldn't be this way. His need for it to be different.
And when he dropped that story? All that was left was... this. The sunset. The bird. The guy singing.
Life happening. Without his commentary.
Eventually traffic moved. He got home. Forty minutes late.
His wife asked if he hit traffic.
"Yeah," he said. "It was actually kind of nice."
She looked at him like he'd lost his mind. Maybe he had.
Or maybe he'd found it.
See you in presence.