There is nothing quite like sitting at a traffic intersection and watching the lights cycle through a second time without getting your turn.

Our traffic light system has taught us that it can be counted on. We may not like to wait while others get to go, but we at least have the certainty that soon it will be our turn. Order does indeed exist.

Yet when we get passed over, there is a breakdown in the order of things. If we can't count on getting our turn in a traffic intersection, an admittedly impersonal but egalitarian system, what can we count on? Feeling disempowered is the experience of a disturbance, a breech in the continuity of events. Such an experience occurs when sitting at an intersection and watching another light turn from green to red, and back to green before getting your turn.

Usually this indignity occurs late at night when the lights are on timers, meaning there are few cars on the road. This adds to the feeling of disempowerment. The light is green for quiet, dark empty streets, for no one. There is no one being served, accounted for, and there you are, sitting, waiting, wanting, staring, a real flesh and blood human being trying to get someplace, stuck......one can easily begin to feel existential dread, and wonder, 'will I ever get to go?' Disempowering.

It is like you don't even exist. Talk about not feeling seen. Then another cycle happens, and again your turn is missed. You flash your brights, you pull backwards and forwards, hoping to make your presence, no, your existence known. "I'm here, please see me. I want a turn. Please....please.....please."