A post by Yujia Song

I’m always fascinated by what happens at intersections of neighborhood streets. One Sunday morning when I went running, I approached an intersection with four-way stop signs. I slowed to a stop as I saw a car coming down the other street. I had the right of way, but I wasn’t in a rush, so I smiled at the driver and waved for her to cross first. The driver nodded and smiled back, and extended her hand to tell me to go ahead. So I crossed – quickly – and waved back again to say “thank you.”

Encounters like this fascinate me not just because they give me a warm, fuzzy feeling, but also because all the motioning at each other was entirely useless for practical purposes and even counter-productive (since it would have been much more efficient for us to simply cross the street in the order prescribed by the traffic rules).

Now if you’re thinking, but it’s not useless, then great, but we have some explaining to do. If the driver and I did get something done while not crossing (even when it was legal and safe to do so), what was it that we did? And how did it happen when we neither moved much nor said anything? Finally, to the extent that whatever happened during that time was indeed extraneous – indeed, counterproductive -- to our practical purposes of going somewhere, why did we do it? Was it just a waste of time? These are questions I want to explore in this post.