holytrousers

That's a nice attitude, if only one could keep it towards everyday situations...
I had a similar lesson while heading to school. I was midway through a very bike-unfriendly highway at 20km/h with still 25km to travel and wasn't really motivated to try harder : headwind, terrible air, boring cars everywhere etc.
Then appears a cyclist out of nowhere and passes me without further notice. Nice carbon fiber road bike, helmet (rarity in Tunisia), fancy dreadlocks.. I got furious. I thought : "What the hell does he think he is doing. Why so arrogant ? He could have waved at least !" and tried to catch him. I would have appreciated some company, so i did my best to catch him up but 30km/h was his cruise speed and that was my limit. As i realized that, i tried to find some nice excuses: "whatever, i already did 25km so he wasn't that better than me" .. or : "his bike is much lighter than mine, i have to ride this old piece of junk..". of course it didn't help to feel better so i kept trying for about 15km while he kept slowly moving away.
In the end i realized that the guys' uncivilized ways weren't the problem. He ran the red lights and that's when i knew he won. It was my self-esteem that was put on trial.. I didn't know what was on his mind, so how could i judge him anyway. He might have had a fight, didn't sleep well, or better, he might have been late for an important meeting.
There was a nice feeling of humbleness mixed with a healthy need to rest. I also learned that being tired (and slow) is most of the time not a physical thing, but a consequence of failing to find meaning in harder pedaling.