Life's Tiny Bets

I was driving in a new city when a cat ran across a four-lane road with a speed limit of forty miles per hour. My foot came off the gas before I'd even made a conscious decision. The car behind me, already following too closely and apparently annoyed by my hesitation, swung left and accelerated. The oncoming traffic held its speed. No one else seemed to notice the cat at all.

Spoiler alert! The cat made it across with room to spare.

I watched it disappear into a hedge and wondered how many times it's it done that sprint. How many mornings has it stood at that curb, reading the gaps between bumpers, calculating something it has no language for and then running? It had a whole system built from repetition and close calls and whatever a cat understands about its own survival. It knows that road. What it can't know is the driver who is already hurried before the cat crosses. The one who sees a slowing car as an obstacle instead of a signal.

The cat calculates everything it can see. It has no way to account for the variable that isn't looking at the road, or looking at the cat.

I thought about this on the jetway this morning, my usual air travel anxiety sitting in my chest, and I recognized that I make the same bet every time I board a plane. Every time I eat the leftovers one day past socially reasonable. Every time I send my kid into a building and trust that the walls hold and the people inside are doing their jobs and the world will return him to me at pickup. None of these decisions are guarantees. They are all calculated risks I absorb so quietly that most days I don't notice I'm absorbing them at all.

The truth is, the world can be cruel, nature is a beautiful beast, and none of us make it out alive. That's not pessimism, it's the terms we agreed to, whether we read them or not.

Most of us are the cat. Running the gaps, judging distances with imperfect information, committing to the dash, trusting our read of the situation because what else can we do. The bets are constant and mostly they pay off and we never have think about them again.

What I keep thinking about is the car that swings left. Not to be malicious, probably just late, definitely not looking for a cat. The things just moving through the world at their own speed with their own agenda, unable to imagine that the indifference has edges sharp enough to matter to someone or something else.

I don't think most harm is intentional. I think most harm is inattention fueled by momentum.

That said, I hope the cat makes it every time and I hope we get better about taking our foot off the gas.

XOXO,