Empty Spaces - The Race to Win Nothing At All

And the snow plough won that day!

My car, with me in it, was nose deep in the ditch with the back tire in the air. What did the plough win? Well nothing at all, that’s the point. Let me explain.

It seems that anymore people are racing. We hurry through our day racing from one event to another. Anywhere you go – you’ll find people frantically trying to go around you, get past you, get in front of you or maybe you are that person. It feels as if people will stop at nothing to win the race. Listen to the news in the morning. Inevitably there will be a story of how someone did something terrible to someone else in order to win the race.

It got me thinking – what’s the prize? I mean usually there’s a prize, right? Many countries chose their best athletes to go to the Olympics, and there the prize is to be Gold Medalist. Nascar drivers race every Sunday for points towards the championship and ultimately win money and lots of it. The Academy Awards offer a little gold statue to those who’ve acted their way into our hearts. In the game of Clue, the person who solves the murder wins bragging rights. So, I ask again – what’s the prize?

You’d be hard pressed to answer that because there is no answer. There are a multitude of fatalities on our highways every day. EVERY DAY! All in the name of winning nothing at all. When you, maybe, arrive at your destination 30 seconds before I arrive at mine, guess what? We both got there – no prize. When you cut in the line in front of me at Walmart, guess what? We both win and lose because we got stuff but had to pay. When you push me out of the way to make way for you, guess what? YOU WIN!

And the snow plough won that day! That’s right. On a snowy Thursday just about a week ago a snow plough and I had a Canadian face-off. I was going Westbound on Chantler Rd and the plough was heading East. Like any other self respect snow covered street around here, there was only one path of tire tracks, right down the middle of the road. One of us decided to take their half of the road down the middle and the other ended up nose down in the ditch. The plough driver won NOTHING AT ALL! Except, I guess, the smugness of watching (and I’m sure the driver watched) me go into the ditch. Hmm sounds kinda crappy right… well it was. I lost. I lost time trying to get my car out. I will likely lose money repairing whatever damage was done. And I lost faith in people, just a bit.

Here’s the thing. The story doesn’t end there. As the loser, I also got to meet an incredible gentleman who lives on Chantler Rd just down the street from the “incident”. As I was calculating just how in the heck I could avoid freezing to death in that ditch (which didn’t sound like a fun Thursday afternoon activity to me), a big blue pick-up truck pulled up and out popped a man. He asked if I could use the help, and there you are. Seconds later, my husband pulled up to help as well. There we were. Three people chatting and working together, and with a little prayer and elbow grease the car backed out of the ditch. I was mobile again.

The point of this long story about empty spaces is this. You can do your best to win the next empty space, just like our buddy the snow plough driver. You’ll smugly travel along your life journey winning nothing at all. Or you can be me, the loser, and engage in your life journey and gain some pretty cool memories. I think I wanna stick to being the loser in the story. Thanks Chantler guy – you are the best!