Sarah Richter/Pixabay

The other day I was making a turn while driving. The traffic was mild. The situation uneventful. I was following the rules of the road. Suddenly, after completing the left turn, I noticed two motorcycles firing down the road from the opposite direction. As the riders approached my position (I was now facing their direction), the first turned to me and gave me the middle finger while screaming its intention, directed at me. He sped by. A second rider followed suit, and as if performing in synchrony, she angrily directed the same gesture toward me along with the same words.

The situation occurred in a few seconds, and for much of it I was in a perplexed state of amusement. Yet I did have a chance to consciously respond. Research on reaction times has consistently shown that humans are able to respond to visual and auditory stimuli in only a fraction of a second (Jain et al., 2015).

I will share my conscious response, but first consider these five responses to the middle finger. Each of these could be done without thinking, offered on autopilot, like so much of our behavior. And, each of these could be consciously offered even in this split-second scenario.

1. Wave and smile.

The message here is — thank you for seeing me. Thank you for acknowledging me. And, this gives the person the opposite of what they were expecting, which might cause a moment of self-reflection, or not. In addition, smiling brings forth a range of personal benefits (Nhat Hanh, 2009)

2. Give it back.

You get what you give. A common impulse to this offense is to return it with gusto. There’s a sense of equalizing the playing field with this approach. For many, the thinking is to not let the other person "win," take advantage of you, or affront you.

3. Beat yourself up.

The other person has started to beat you up with the offensive gesture, so another approach is to join them and attack yourself for what you must have done wrong and how awful you must be. You criticize yourself for a minor mistake, miscommunication, misstep, or lapse of awareness. You join the flow of aggression toward yourself.

4. Ignore (and internally judge) them.

Look away. Shake your head. Roll your eyes. You say to yourself, “It’s not worth it. They are not worth responding to.” You might critique their childishness, their underuse of character strengths, or some aspect of their appearance. You feel their approach is an anti-humanity one.

5. Apologize.

You say or “mouth” an apology or offer an apologetic gesture. Whether you are aware of what was offensive or not, you know that somehow the other person perceives you caused their suffering in that moment. You might have been an innocent trigger for them. You might have done something that broke social or cultural convention or expectations. You wish to repair that offense. This approach is about compassion. It involves the humility to acknowledge the suffering of the other. Being willing to apologize has plenty of challenges and also plenty of benefits (Schumann, 2018).

What did I do in this motorcycle incident?

Those who know me and my proclivity to turn to strengths might suspect I chose #5. I did not. While all the responses above have been in my repertoire, I went with #1 – I smiled and waved. And, I must say I felt a lot of joy from this approach! I felt empowered and pleased to do the opposite of an angry impulse. It was a mindful choice in that second. Was there some mockery or passive aggressiveness in my response? It is possible. But, that was far from the dominant feature.

The question I felt I was facing was: What can I do to help this situation in which I literally only have about one second to act? My wave and smile may not have transformed them, but it didn’t further escalate the situation. And it transformed me in that moment.