A silver Toyota RAV4 sits in front of me at the stoplight at Kingshighway and eastbound Highway 74. The light turns green. The driver’s head is down, staring at her screen, oblivious.

My hand is ready to beep the horn. Drivers behind me wait, impatient, for me to move. She looks up, sees the light, and stomps on the accelerator — phone still in her hand.

This is my experience pretty much every day now. It’s constant, made worse because I rarely see anyone stopped for such an infraction, even though we have laws written making this behavior illegal. So the thought running through my head is she’s careless, thoughtless, and that one text or scroll is way more important than getting safely to her destination. I know exactly who she is.

Only I don’t. I really don’t.

Is that her mother’s name on the screen? Does her mother only text if something is wrong? Or maybe she’s a nurse who just got called in, typing *on my way* knowing she’s late for her shift. Do I know if she’s fine or just careless? Or is she someone who will do this every day and keep doing it long after this light turns red again?

Is any of that accurate? I managed to magically make up an entire narrative about a complete stranger in two seconds.

Assumptions are like that. Fast. Free. And I’m the one being hurt, ignored, or wronged. In that moment life is *happening to me*. Her carelessness? My delay. But what’s really going on at that intersection is two people are there, together, briefly, strangers to each other. It’s not some kind of subversive plot twist. Just a coincidence. A fast encounter lasting seconds.

The Toltecs have a name for the habit I was engaged in at the light: making assumptions. Deciding what’s true about someone else’s inner life so I don’t have to sit in the discomfort of not knowing. It’s efficient. It’s also wrong, because it lets me skip the harder work — which is treating her kindly not because she’s earned it, but because she’s a person. Everyone deserves kindness.

I didn’t honk. This time. She looked up, saw the green, and drove on. I’ll never know her story. I don’t need to. I just need to remember, next red light, that I don’t know it — and drive on anyway, without deciding I do.