Right now, while people in Los Angeles debate whether to take the freeway or surface streets to avoid the price hike, there are people in the Middle East who are having a very different conversation. Not about where to drive, but whether to drive at all. Not about the cost of the journey, but whether the destination will still be there.

The war involving Iran has, in recent months, sent shockwaves through oil markets, and that ripple has reached our gas stations. And I understand, I live here too. I see the signs. I notice the numbers. Rising prices are real, and I'm not dismissing them entirely.

But I want you to sit with something for a moment.

Somewhere, a family is sheltering in a place that is not their home because their home is no longer safe. Somewhere, a parent is explaining to a child what the sound outside means. Somewhere, a person is grieving someone they will not be able to bury properly, in a city that may not let them stop moving long enough to grieve.

And here, we are annoyed about the commute.

I am not asking you to feel guilty for being safe. Guilt is not the point. The point is gratitude, the real kind, not the performative kind you post about on Thanksgiving. The kind that quietly reshapes how you move through your day. The kind that makes you pause, mid-complaint, and think: I am here. I am okay. My inconvenience today is someone else's miracle.

The price of gas goes up. The price of gas comes down. That has always been true, and it will keep being true.

But the people caught in the middle of something far larger than an oil market, their losses don't come down. They don't stabilize by next quarter. They become the thing they carry for the rest of their lives.

So the next time you pull up to a pump and feel that familiar frustration rising, let it. Feel it. Then let it pass. And when it does, try to make room for something quieter.

The fact that a gas price is your biggest problem today is not a complaint.

It is, if you let it be, a profound kind of relief