Bumper stickers are hardly ever a source of amusement, much less a cause for pondering human impulses, but as I sat at a traffic light a few days ago I saw one that was both those things. It said, “Free Tibet.”

OK, it’s not funny right away. But you have to consider the context. I live in a small town near the major city (by North Carolina standards) of Raleigh. It’s a place where farmers crowd into the local banks when crop payments are made, and where — until the tobacco auction system faded some years ago — it was common to see tractors hauling cured leaf through town to the area’s warehouses. The local drug store still has a soda fountain. A football game at the high school is a big event. People help strangers in distress, even to the point of using their just-purchased frozen turkey to fight off an evil-doer intent on harm.

In short, my little town has many virtues, but I doubt many of its residents could even find Tibet on a map. And there’s certainly not a Chinese consulate around where its diplomats might see the bumper sticker’s exhortation and immediately cable a message to Beijing saying, “Bad news. We’re losing the public relations battle in rural North Carolina regarding Tibet. Maybe we should reconsider our position.”

It could have just been the long wait for the light, but that thought had me giggling.

Then I began to wonder how the car’s owner had settled on Tibet as the issue most worthy of his or her attention. There were no other bumper stickers on the car, so this person wasn’t one of those people who make their cars a mobile inventory of their political and cultural beliefs. (By the way, it seems that for every vehicle I see with a collection of conservative bumper stickers on it, there are at least five plastered with liberal messages. Feel free to chime in with a theory on this.) Instead, this car’s owner had bypassed all domestic issues and made his or her sole concern the freedom of a remote mountain country best known for a single export — the Dalai Lama.

Maybe the explanation is something as simple as the bumper sticker was pretty. And maybe I should be glad there aren’t all that many traffic lights in my town. Pondering is hard work.