Red Lights Are A Mirror

I’m not gonna lie, the first time I really noticed red lights was a Tuesday in March. I was sitting in the back of my dad’s car on the way back from a doctor’s appointment, knees pulled up, earbuds in, doing absolutely nothing productive. We rolled up to a light on Hepingmen East Road and just sat there. And sat there. And I remember staring at the glowing red circle and thinking, wow, this thing is staring right back at me.

That’s the moment I started thinking red lights are a mirror. Not in some deep philosophical way, not in a “let me journal about this” kind of way. More like, a really uncomfortable way that I can’t shake.

Last Thursday I was alone in my car at 11:47 PM. The streets were basically empty. Not a soul at the intersection of Gulou and Dianmen. The light turned red and I had every reason to just roll through it. Nobody was around. I could’ve gone. But I stopped. I sat there in the dark, hands at ten and two, and the red light was right there glowing into my eyes through the windshield. And I thought, why am I obeying this thing? Who is it for? It’s for me. It’s only for me. And that’s when red lights hit me as a mirror — the rules that exist for nobody else, that I still follow anyway, because of who I think I am.

OK so here’s the thing. When you’re waiting at a red light, especially a long one, especially alone at night, you can’t hide from yourself. The car is silent. Phone is on the couch at home because I forgot it. Nothing to scroll. No playlist to fidget with. Just you and the windshield and the red. And whatever’s underneath all the noise of the day finally has room to breathe.

I started paying attention to this on purpose. I’d find myself waiting at lights and just observing my own face in the rearview mirror. Noticing how tired my eyes look. How tight my jaw is. The little micro-frown I apparently make when nobody’s watching. The red light forced a stop, and the stop forced honesty. I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to get to the noodle shop.

My friend told me she uses red lights as her therapy. I laughed at her. She goes, “No seriously, I’m a person who has three jobs and a kid and a cat and I never sit down. Red lights are the only place where I can’t do anything. So I made a deal with myself — every red light is one breath. Just one.” She told me this while we were both sitting in traffic on the Third Ring Road last month, sweating through our shirts, and I looked over and she was actually calm. Like, terrifyingly calm. Eyes closed. Breathing slow. I tried it. The light turned green before I could finish my breath. But I felt something.

My mom does something similar but more old-school. She hums. The whole song. She hums the entire song that was playing when she and my dad met at a red light decades ago. I know this because she told me while laughing, then started crying a little, then told me to not make a face. Red lights are a mirror. They show you what you’re carrying.

I started counting. Over the past six weeks I’ve been logging — well, kind of logging, more like noticing — how I react at red lights. Three categories:

1. The angry ones. Some red lights I just hate. I clench the steering wheel. I mutter. I look at the countdown like it personally wronged me. Last week I caught myself whispering “come on come on come on” and laughed out loud because I sounded like a maniac. What am I in a rush for? I’m not a surgeon. I don’t have a heart in the cooler. I’m going to buy yogurt.

2. The sad ones. Some red lights I just go quiet. The music gets turned down. I look at the people in the cars next to me. I wonder where they’re going. I wonder if they’re also tired. I wonder if they’re going home to an empty apartment or a full one or one where someone’s going to ask them how their day was and they have to lie. Last Tuesday I made eye contact with a woman in a white SUV and we both just looked at each other for a second. She had a kid in the backseat and looked completely done. I almost waved. I didn’t.

3. The honest ones. Some red lights I just see myself. The ones where I can’t lie to myself about what’s actually going on. The light at the intersection near my old school — that’s the one where I usually crack. Because every time I stop there I think about who I was at seventeen and how I thought I’d be somewhere else by now.

You know what red lights really are? They’re a forced pause in a culture that refuses to pause. Everything wants you to keep going. Phones want your eyes. Apps want your thumbs. Bosses want your Slack status green. Algorithms want your next click. And then there’s this giant red circle hanging in the air saying, no. Not yet. Sit. Be here. Deal with yourself for twenty-eight seconds.

Twenty-eight seconds. That’s the average red light in my city. I looked it up because I am who I am. Twenty-eight seconds of staring at myself in a mirror I didn’t ask for.

There’s this one red light by the Yonghegong station that I go through almost every day. I have a whole relationship with it. It’s long. Like, ninety seconds long. By the end I’m usually composing texts in my head I never send. Replaying conversations from two years ago. Mentally editing the apology I owe someone. Ninety seconds of just… processing. That’s more mental processing than I do in a whole workday most weeks.

Is this healthy? Probably not. Am I going to stop? Also probably not. But at least I know what’s happening now.

The other weird thing about red lights as mirrors — they show you your age. I remember being twenty and the red light was just an inconvenience. I had somewhere to be. I had a story to tell the person waiting for me. I had plans. I had time. The red light was just a pause between two exciting things. Now? The red light is sometimes the most rest I get all day. Which is kind of devastating when you think about it.

I think about my dad’s red lights. He used to drum on the steering wheel. He’d do this thing where he’d slap his palm against the wheel in time with whatever was on the radio. The red light was his concert venue. I thought it was so annoying. Now I miss it so much I can’t breathe sometimes. He passed in2022. The first red light after the funeral, I was alone, and I tried to drum on the wheel like he did. I couldn’t get the rhythm. I just sat there and cried. Red lights are a mirror. They showed me I was becoming him.

There’s this whole genre of TikTok where people film themselves at red lights doing emotional monologues. Camera pointed at the dashboard. Eyes wet. Talking about their ex, their job, their mom. I used to scroll past them and think, “wow, dramatic.” Now I’m one of those people. I don’t film it. But I’m definitely doing the monologue.

Sometimes the mirror shows you something good though. Not always doom and gloom. Last weekend I was at a red light and the sunset was hitting the buildings across the intersection and the whole thing turned pink for like four seconds. Gold-pink. The kind of light that makes a city look like a postcard. I almost missed it because I was checking my mirrors. I caught it because the red light forced me to look up. That was free. That was the red light giving me something.

I keep telling my little cousin about this. She’s sixteen and just got her learner’s permit. She drives with me sometimes on weekends. I told her last Sunday, “Hey, when you stop at a red light, just look up for a second. Don’t check your phone. Don’t fiddle with the radio. Just look up.” She rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d get stuck. Then she did it anyway. And she goes, “Okay that was actually kind of beautiful.” She saw pigeons on the ledge of a noodle shop. That was her moment. Not dramatic. Just pigeons.

Maybe that’s the trick. Red lights aren’t really about revelation. They’re about permission. Permission to stop. Permission to look. Permission to not optimize every second of your commute. In a city that runs on ambition and hustle and being on time, red lights are these tiny daily acts of enforced slowness that I think most of us secretly need but never admit.

I sat at a red light this morning. The usual one by the Lama Temple. Counted to twenty-eight. Didn’t finish my thought. The light turned green. I went. But the thought is still there, hanging. Waiting for the next red light to come back and find me.

That’s the thing about mirrors. They don’t go anywhere. They just wait for you to look again.

I looked again this morning. Saw the same tired face. Same jaw. Same micro-frown.

But also, today? Today I saw something new. I saw a woman across the intersection smiling at her phone. I saw a kid on a bicycle doing a wheelie. I saw the light change, and I saw myself choose to take a breath before I moved my foot to the gas.

It’s not much. But it’s something.

I think I’ll keep stopping at red lights.

[“Traffic Stops”, “Urban Driving”, “City Life”, “Daily Reflection”, “Commute Moments”]