A stretch of long, straight road, with a 50mph limit. There are double white lines up the whole length of the road, because there are a lot of twists, turns and adjoining roads. Open farmland, edged with old trees, surround. It’s just after 7am, and mine is the only vehicle in sight. It’s a warm, spring morning, and the sky is a pale azure. I am driving into the rising sun.
There are two pigeons up ahead, bumbling about on my side of the tarmac. They’ll move, but I slow down, regardless. The crow I passed earlier, pecking at a squashed something, moved. The sparrows, dustbathing in some dried mud up against the kerb, moved. The other sets of pigeons along this route saw me coming, mooched off to the side, and then flew when they remembered they had wings. I’d slowed down for them, too. Things had turned out okay.
Meanwhile, the clear road is quickly disappearing, while time – weirdly – is slowing down. I am slowing down, shifting to fourth gear. The pigeons are still trundling about, seemingly oblivious to the metallic death careening towards them. Pricked with fear, I consider evasive manoeuvres. I’m nearing a village now, and the pigeons are on the top of a ridge with a blind dip. I can’t swerve, because I can’t know if there’s anything coming the other way. And if I brake, I might skid and lose control. I have to keep going. Don’t I? I could brake, but I’d have to do it now, and even then, I might have left it too late. One of the pigeons takes to the sky. I brake, hard. Time is crawling, but I seem to be racing. Where’s the other pigeon? There’s a stillness, like the dead moment during a total eclipse of the sun. The sun’s rays reach beneath my visor as I top the ridge, strobing my vision. The bird must have flown off to the side! The relief! I pass into the blind dip. There’s a small bump. I hear it as much as I feel it. No. Surely, no. I check my rearview mirror. I see a sickening puff of feathers, rising like smoke, falling like blossom.
I pull over, and cry. And the defensive rationalising begins. It was just a pigeon. Pigeons are not rare, or special. Most people consider them pests. Vermin. Good for nothing. But the pigeon had a life. And it might have been a mate, a parent. Its life was as dear to it, as mine is to me. Its life was precious, and I killed it because when things didn’t go as I’d expected them to go, I didn’t make a decision. I’d banked on things turning out okay, with no other effort from myself than a reduction in speed and some overthinking. But it’s never the thought that counts. It’s the action.
If I’d have slammed on the brakes, or swerved as soon as I’d seen the birds, both would still be alive, going about their business. And I’d have got a dopamine hit for doing the right thing. I had a choice, and pretended I didn’t. The whole thing happened in less than five seconds. But I’d had agency. It’s easy to pretend you don’t and take the path – or road – of least resistance.
To paraphrase the Spiderman franchise – with agency comes responsibility.
I sit in my car, the hazard lights ticking and flashing, watching the rush hour build. I’d given the crows a meal, or a fox, or a rat, I thought, trying to justify the waste. What a cop-out! And in any case, the scavenger would have had to weigh up the risk of being hit by an on-coming vehicle while it went to claim its prize. It might not have been a free dinner. But then, there’s no such thing as a free dinner, is there? For every win, someone loses – like environment suffering from the plastic bottle of water you bought because they don’t put oat drink in corner shop coffee machines, and you’re vegan for the environment as well as the animals. Maybe if I’d have just had a black coffee instead of water, my thinking might have been clearer.
The ticking of the hazard light was becoming an annoyance. This berating, this mourning, wallowing in this hellish guilt isn’t helping anyone. What am I doing, sitting here? Nothing. What am I waiting for? An epiphany? An absolution? Do you sit and rot, or do you learn the lesson, and do the best you can? Cars are having to slow and pull around me. When two lives are lost to indecision, tragedy becomes absurdity. I turn the hazards off, and signal to pull out back onto the road. I have to keep going.
#criticalthinking
Morwenna Blackwood, Author 