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What I didn’t deserve

When a car accident is the highlight of your week

Nothing twists my stomach with guilt like damaging a car. My single worst day of first year gained its reputation when I borrowed a generous upperclassman’s car and drove it straight into a column in a parking garage — a day that will live in infamy. Last Monday, I found myself once again in tears, standing in a driveway, unable to take back the damage my 2000 Chevy Suburban had caused.

It was dark, foggy and raining at 11 p.m. — the perfect storm of terrible driving conditions. I should have checked the driveway before getting into my car, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have relied on what little vision I had left peering out of my back window, but I put the car into reverse and took my foot off the pedal anyways. It was only a few seconds later that I jammed my foot back onto the brake, but the noise of metal against metal had already rung in my ears and I knew it was too late. I had backed straight into my friend’s car.

I climbed down from the driver’s seat afraid of the conversation I was about to have. I felt myself reverting back to my 5-year-old self, afraid to fess up to my mistakes and face the punishment that would follow. The worst part was that I knew I deserved what I was about to get — this was completely, solely and utterly my fault.

Even though the car belonged to one of my best friends, and even though I know him to be an incredibly kind person, I was still shocked when I told him I just nailed the side of his car, and his first response was to not only say that it was okay but to ask how my car looked. He didn’t yell at me — instead, he forgave me and was concerned about me, something I didn’t feel like I deserved by any standard.

I wasn’t shocked because this was out of line with his character at all; I was shocked because it was out of line with what the world tells me that interaction should have looked like — reasonably and rightly. We live in a world — one I often feel is intensified at U.Va. — that teaches us from a very early age certain expectations about what we feel we deserve. Sometimes this ideology serves us well, as it can motivate us to work harder or deter us from breaking rules. It can also harm us, instilling within us too often a sense of entitlement or a fear we don’t even know we are living with.

What I was reminded of by my friend in the aftermath of my fender-bender is that there are ways to live other than by our earning-centered standard. Common grace, which my friend exercised, is one of them. Grace is given or received when one person gets a free gift of what they don’t deserve because someone else is willing to pay for the mess they’ve made. Scandalous but also often wonderful to watch, grace works contrary to our society’s rules. It changes the trajectory of a situation — instead of two plus two equaling four, someone or something interferes, and the sum is changed, often because it’s shared.

University students are game-changers. We’re constantly looking for ways to make an impact. Change can be made by working really hard to earn a position of power or by using what we’ve gained because we deserve the opportunity. But change can also be made by taking a step back or down and giving up the thing we’ve earned so someone else can experience something they don’t believe they deserve. Maybe the impact we want to have is as simple as saying “it’s okay” the next time a friend — or I –— ram into the side of your car.

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