Changing lanes

If I happen to drive to work, the inevitable traffic jam tends to catch me on the way home. The evening ECP rush never fails to strike, slowing my (and everyone else's) journey to a crawl.

I'm at a point in my life where I have to decide if I should change lanes. In the heavy traffic of life, my personal experience is that no matter how often one filters into another lane, you'd probably end up at the traffic light off the exit at roughly the same time, or probably even later. Sometimes it's better to focus on what's in front of you instead of looking to the sides, trying to find an “exit” and thinking that others are moving quickly ahead of you. And even if they are, does it really matter? Is life's big goal to get home quickly and give yourself a heart attack and accident in the process? We need to learn to chill.

Sometimes it does make sense to change lanes, especially if there's a big truck chugging uphill ahead. Don't forget to signal though - give yourself and others time to think, reason and take necessary action. Life doesn't really like abruptness.

Observation: In a traffic jam, everything is reversed. The fast lane becomes the slow lane - and the buses and trucks in the "slow" lane end up zooming by. It's the "everyone wants to get to the fast lane" phenomenon.