Here’s my wish for you…

The other day, I turned onto the I-5 on-ramp, and it looked like the dystopian future. 

There was no one, I mean not a single car on the freeway heading south. My brain could not compute what it was seeing. 

Where were all of the cars?

I live in Los Angeles, a city known for its packed freeways and frustrated drivers, and I’m about to get on a six-lane freeway and have free rein to enter like I am going down a six-story water slide. 

I was both giddy and a bit fearful of what had happened to cause this vast emptiness. 

And then I saw it.

A California Highway Patrol was conducting a “traffic break.”

That’s when a cop car zig-zags back and forth across the freeway at slow speeds slowing down the traffic behind them to 25-30 mph. I had never seen this before moving to LA. 

They do it to give emergency vehicles or clean-up crews time to do their work a mile or two down the road. 

But I was getting on the freeway 100 yards ahead of the traffic break. It felt like incredible freedom. 

I got on the road, turned up my stereo, and reveled in the experience. 

And that’s my wish for you.

That this holiday season, you can experience a mental traffic break. That for a moment, you can put a pause on all the expectations; the need for perfection; the people-pleasing, and the fear of disappointments. 

That you can experience a sense of pure joy, a moment of giddiness, or an expected pleasure. 

That you find a moment to throw your hands up in the air and shout, “This is AMAZING!” 

Because just like I experienced, you will eventually find your way back into traffic.

But I will never forget the feeling of freedom on an empty highway. 

I want you to feel that sense of freedom too.