Forgiveness in the Front Seat: A Rideshare Story

 

The ride began with a conversation that should have shocked me more than it did.

My passenger spoke openly about his criminal history. Not one offense. Not two. By his own count, dozens. He discussed them with a matter-of-factness that was almost disorienting. There was no dramatic confession. No visible burden. No sense that he was carrying the weight of every decision he had ever made.

As he casually recounted mistakes that could fill pages, I found myself thinking about the comparatively minor moments that have occupied my own mind for years. Not crimes. Not felonies. Just ordinary human mistakes that somehow refuse to leave. The contrast was impossible to ignore.

As he spoke, I noticed something else: I was reacting to his story in a way that he didn't seem to be reacting to his own.

For most of my life, I've been a reader. Not casually, but obsessively. I've read well over 200 novels, perhaps many more. I've spent thousands of hours inhabiting the minds of fictional characters, following their mistakes, understanding their motives, and witnessing the ripple effects of their decisions. Through books, I've lived hundreds of lives that weren't my own.

Maybe that's why this conversation unsettled me.

While my passenger spoke about his past with remarkable ease, I found myself thinking about the strange burden of awareness. Some people seem capable of moving through life without examining every decision they've ever made. Others replay a single mistake for years, dissecting it from every possible angle.

I have always belonged to the second group.

Before I picked him up, the rideshare app displayed a notice instructing drivers not to deviate from the destination entered into the system. There could have been many explanations for that. Some medical transportation programs require direct routes. Certain court-ordered arrangements can restrict where a person is allowed to travel. The truth wasn't mine to know, and I never asked.

What interested me was not the reason itself but what it represented: a life shaped by systems, appointments, supervision, treatment programs, and interventions.

At one point, he shifted in his seat like he was deciding how much to say next.

"I broke my ankle a while back," he said.

I glanced over. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Walked on it for about a year."

"A year?" I said, before I could stop myself.

He gave a small shrug, like it wasn't something he expected me to understand.

Then he explained how everything had unfolded in pieces. The ankle injury. The delay in treatment. Pain medication that he had been prescribed while waiting for surgery. The way things slowly got worse instead of better. At some point, he mentioned a wound on his leg—he didn't linger on the exact word for it, and I didn't press—but he described it as something that had spread over time.

I remember looking at the road and listening, trying not to fill in too many gaps with my own assumptions.

As rideshare drivers, we end up hearing fragments of people's lives like this. Not the full story, just the parts that come out between directions and traffic lights.

As we drove, he talked about the small farming community he came from, somewhere near Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

According to him, there wasn't much there. Few resources. Few opportunities. Few places to go. Few things to do.

The way he described it, it sounded like the kind of place where everybody knows everybody. The kind of place where life follows familiar patterns because there aren't a lot of other options around.

Then he told me something that stayed with me long after the ride ended.

He said his state had very few treatment centers available. One to three, he estimated. He was surprised by Minnesota. Here, treatment facilities seemed plentiful. Here, there were options. Here, people could find help without traveling extraordinary distances. Here, at least from his perspective, there seemed to be less judgment about the fact that someone might need treatment to recover. Here, asking for help appeared to carry less stigma. Here, recovery felt possible.

As rideshare drivers, we witness a quiet migration that rarely becomes part of public conversation. We pick up people who travel hundreds of miles seeking addiction treatment, mental health services, specialized care, and recovery programs. They come from places where those resources simply don't exist in sufficient numbers.

I'm not saying his hometown is the reason he made the choices he did. Life is more complicated than that.

Still, I kept thinking about what he said. If you grow up in a place with very few opportunities, very few resources, and very few examples of different ways to live, how do you know what else is possible?

Maybe you figure it out on your own.

Maybe someone shows you.

Or maybe you just keep doing what everyone around you is doing because it's the only life you've ever seen.

I don't know if that's what happened to him, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.

And then there was the other question.

How can one person carry dozens of serious offenses with apparent ease while another struggles to forgive themselves for a single mistake?

Part of me wonders whether empathy itself becomes a burden.

After reading hundreds of novels and spending years inhabiting other people's stories, I've become accustomed to looking at situations from multiple perspectives. Every novel asks us to understand someone's choices. Every memoir invites us into another person's struggles. Over time, you start seeing how complicated people really are.

Eventually, some of us become so good at examining other people that we turn that same scrutiny on ourselves.

We replay conversations.

We rethink decisions.

We imagine all the things we should have said differently.

We hold ourselves to standards that we would never impose on a stranger.

Through hundreds of novels, I learned how to understand people.

What I never learned was how to extend that same understanding to myself.

Perhaps that's why the conversation stayed with me.

Not because of the crimes he described.

Not because of the treatment centers.

Not because of the mystery surrounding the warning message attached to the ride.

The conversation stayed with me because it exposed a contradiction I've seen in many people, including myself.

Some people seem unable to forgive themselves for anything.

Others appear able to forgive themselves for almost everything.

Most of us live somewhere in between, carrying old decisions around with us and occasionally pulling them out to examine them one more time.

The passenger never offered a grand lesson. He never asked for sympathy. He never tried to justify his past.

He simply told his story.

And in doing so, he left me with a question I still can't answer:

If understanding other people is supposed to make us more compassionate, why is it often so difficult to show that same compassion to ourselves?

Dentist Day Drift:a story

 The playlist was bothering her. Not in a dramatic way, but in the way that small things bother people who spend their days paying attention to details. I had recently read that some dentists prefer having their playlists organized in a specific order before they begin work, as a way of settling into the day.

One song from the 1980s would play, followed by something current, then another song from an entirely different era. She laughed and called it a wonky playlist.

I was sitting in the dental chair when the conversation drifted toward music. I mentioned that the Michael Jackson movie was coming out and that, for some reason, Michael Jackson had been on my mind lately even though I had no plans to see the film.

What fascinated me wasn't the movie. It was the discipline.

"I liked hearing about his dance rehearsals because I'm involved in dance myself, and I know that it is very beneficial to your health to have such an intense routine."

The dentist nodded.

"I used to be on the dance line in high school," she said.

As we continued talking about dance, she mentioned that her mother had also been involved with a dance line, though not the one she belonged to. Her mother helped coach another group that focused on hip-hop. Watching them perform left a lasting impression on her.

She laughed at the memory.

"There was no way I could do hip-hop. I don't know how their bodies can move like that."

I understood exactly what she meant.

"Yeah," I said. "We were supposed to be a dance team and do kicks, but somehow we only ended up doing hip-hop."

What struck me about the conversation was how quickly it moved from music to dance and then to family. I found myself curious about her mother and the path that had led her daughter to become a dentist.

I asked what her mother had done for a living.

She told me her mother had been a stay-at-home mom raising five children. Later, when the dentist was in undergraduate school, her mother returned to work as a paraprofessional in California and eventually taught virtual classes.

That detail stayed with me.

There seemed to be a connection between those two roles. A woman who spent years helping children learn and grow had raised a daughter who chose a profession centered on helping people in a different way. One worked in education. The other worked in healthcare. Both required patience, communication, and a desire to guide people through situations they could not always navigate alone.

By then, the playlist had long since moved on to another song from another decade.

What began as a passing comment about music had become a conversation about discipline, dance, family, and the subtle influence parents have on the lives of their children.

Sometimes you go to the dentist expecting a routine appointment.

Sometimes you leave thinking about Michael Jackson, hip-hop dancers, and the mothers whose quiet examples continue to shape the people their children become.

Sunday blog post

This week was busy with school activities, swimming, improv, and summer planning.

Last Wednesday, my sons school, Randolph Elementary held its school picnic 🌳. They had several food trucks on site 🚚🍔🌮 along with activities for students and families.it’s interesting to see think about the contrast between the school that I went to as a kid and his because we never had quite so many kids bike to school, even though that was the thing to do back then —like these kids do at my son’s school.

And back in the day our school never had nearly enough money to bring in food trucks !

With the school year coming to a close, we've also been getting ready for some of the end-of-year events. We gathered supplies for Fort Day ⛺ and packed some games for Board Game Day 🎲. One of my favorite board games is Guess Who?

Randolph Elementary (St Paul) offers a lot of opportunities for students. My son has participated in after-school programs, school events, and activities with friends throughout the year.

On Thursday, I took my son swimming at the YMCA 🏊‍♂️.

On Friday, we attended a birthday party at the rec center 🎂🎉. One of the activities involved throwing ping-pong balls into cups 🏓🥤, and there were lots of kids running around and having fun. Watching them interact made me wonder what they'll be like when they're all in college someday 😏.

I also met with some of the performers from Waxy Comedy 🎭🎹 at a friend's house for rehearsal. Waxy Comedy is the troupe that I lead, and we're getting ready for our upcoming performance at Improvocation on June 10 at Phoenix Theatre. We spent time rehearsing musical improv and discussing upcoming summer events for the group.

, it was a full week with school activities, swimming, a birthday party, improv rehearsal, and preparations for summer. ☀️

The Art of Listening in Motion:a rideshare story

 

The Art of Listening in Motion

Recently I found myself thinking about improv theatre while driving.

Not because I was on stage. But because every ride feels like a scene that has already started before I step into it.

Two passengers got into my car recently and said, almost casually, that they were musicians.

One of them said he was a composer. The other said he was a producer.

That alone could be a premise in an improv class: two musicians with different creative languages meet in a confined space and talk about identity, travel, and meaning.

One was from Sweden, the other from Philadelphia. They connected through Sweden immediately. Not just the place itself, but the idea of it—how small countries have tightly woven cultural ecosystems where music, TV, and comedy circulate quickly. One person knows someone who knows someone.

It reminded me of Minnesota in a strange way. The same quiet rule: you don’t just walk into people’s homes. You have to be known first.

That’s already a kind of social script. Not written, but deeply understood.

We drifted into music, comedy, favorite comedians, and people they’d met. One of them told a story about being in Central Park and meeting a comedian carrying soccer gear.

And I realized: this is improv too. Not on a stage, but in real time. People entering and exiting each other’s stories without rehearsal.

They were in town looking for a Best Buy, trying to find a specific cable for a keyboard. Something they couldn’t get shipped. A practical need pulling them through the city.

At one point I almost went with them, because I was also thinking about cables, connectors, small technical problems that feel oddly urgent in the moment.

That’s another thing about improv: you say yes to the reality in front of you, even if you don’t fully understand it yet.

But the deeper layer wasn’t the cable. It was the way the conversation kept forming invisible connections. I found myself trying to link people together—Sweden, a friend I know there, this passenger’s story, cultural overlap, coincidence. Like my mind was constantly building a web of possible intersections.

I think that’s what I’m really doing in these moments. Not just listening, but mapping relationships between people who will never meet again.

Earlier that day I had done an interview I felt good about. Later, I told passengers about it, and they asked how it went. There was something grounding about that—these brief strangers holding fragments of my day like it mattered.

Another ride took me through downtown Minneapolis with a woman trying to find an address among buildings that all looked the same. GPS looping. Phones confirming nothing. We circled back to where we started.

It felt like another kind of scene: repetition, confusion, search for orientation.

In the middle of it she talked about advocating for herself. Then admitted that she struggles with it too. Her twin, she said, is the one who can navigate the city easily.

There was something honest in the way she said it, like she was describing not just navigation, but confidence.

She also talked about her dogs—Chihuahuas she has to carry in a stroller because they refuse to walk.

At some point I called it a “mothering instinct.” She corrected me, gently, but the word stayed in the air anyway, like a line that reveals more than it means to.

That’s the thing about these rides. People reveal themselves in small, unplanned ways. Not in speeches, but in fragments. A story about a dog stroller. A joke about being lost. A casual mention of a twin who is better at life in some invisible way.

And I realize now that improv isn’t just about speaking without a script.

It’s about noticing what people are already saying when they think they’re just talking.

The heart of every scene is already there. You don’t create it—you listen for it.

And sometimes, driving through a city full of strangers, I think that might be the only real skill I’m practicing.

Not performing.

But staying present long enough to hear what the moment is actually trying to say.