A funny thing happened while I was out on my run this weekend. It was a strange thing that I've never, ever experienced before. As I approached a driveway to Gordon Food Service a truck was waiting for traffic to clear in the path of the sidewalk. It was an old chevy truck, blue with rust spots over the tires and a cap on the back.
When I usually arrive at a situation like this, I start looking for alternatives. Nothing sucks more than to be out on a long run, come towards the end when you're getting tired, and having to stop dead in your tracks for a car in your path. I usually look for a gap behind the car, for the start of the sidewalk on the other side, safe footing for my feet to traverse, and eye contact with the driver.
As I said, a strange thing happened. The truck slowly started to move backwards. The man inside had seen me coming and moved his truck out of my path so that I could safely cross. We made eye contact, he nodded with a smile and both hands on the wheel, I gave a small wave and mouthed 'thank you,' to show my appreciation.
Moments like these give me hope in humanity.
Despite running along a road with a speed limit of 45, lined with big box stores and strip malls and plenty of places for cars to knock out your legs; despite running in the suburban wasteland where cars rule and pedestrians should get a car, this man still backed up his truck for me to make safe passage.
We are all humans. Every single one of us. Sometimes when we drive around in our machines and play on our phones and interact through our computers we forget that. Its much easier to yell at a car swerving in front of you, to personify the car and give it a name like 'big red' or something, than it is to make eye contact with a person and do the same thing.
One of the things I've been noticing in interactions with people and places is that trust is a falling commodity. Recently there was a blog post written by an American Hindu traveling during Ramadan. Yes, I know Ramadan and Hindu are different, but the fear that permeates our society is quite evident in this blog post.
I think about these things often, not just because I am distrustful of cars on my runs. I think about these things because it is the single greatest challenge I see in urban planning. The lack of trust is the greatest issue in Detroit. Not bankruptcy or jobs or blight, but a lack of trust. A deep-seeded distrust in different looking peoples, namely black and white, has caused a rift in metro Detroit that we still struggle with today.
How do you go about building trust? How can you get groups to come together and not have fear? I will admit that if I'm walking down a street, I'm far more fearful of a lone black man than I am of a lone white man. Why? Why do I think that? Why do we have so much judgement of others and ideas of others just based on a look or a word or a weird action. The writer of the blog above had a strange set of circumstances that made things look suspicious, but only if we train our eyes to see it that way. We are only fearful of each other if we train our thoughts to think that way.
It seems to me that our priorities should be focused on our culture and how we interact with one another, rather than what happened at the VMAs or how the job numbers were this month. If we can reestablish trust, maybe we can work together towards something greater.
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