Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Its not even 8AM and I'm having one of those days...

Ever had those days, where everything and anything that could go wrong does? Yah, I've had them, but I don't usually complain about them.

Yet, this morning as I'm doing my Seattle duty and sitting in line for a drive up espresso stand, this woman parks her car, gets out and walks over to the window of the stand. Um...did she miss it was a DRIVE UP? Anyhow, she doesn't know me from Eve, yet she starts complaining about how bad her day is and how horrible things this morning have been.

Okay, I'll bite.

"Like what", I say, secretly hoping she won't actually respond.

Instead she goes into the WAR and PEACE story about how long the red light at the bottom of the hill is. So I ask again, "And that's what has your day off to a bad start?" Flustered she responds with a , "Well, yes. The city planners, blah blah blah..." (blah blah blah = me tuning out because I quickly summised that she was a nutcase.) I get my cuppa Joe, thankfully, put my car in drive and tell this poor poor soul with the brightest, happiest smile I can conjure, to have a nice day.

As I drove off I got to thinking how easy we put things into the "pain in the ass/horrible" category. I mean really, in the grand scheme of things, is the red light not changing fast enough really worth having a bad day over. I think this as I spill coffee down my shirt (and anyone who knows me knows that's a frequent event). Normally, I'd cuss a little and just shrug. This time I pondered just how earth shattering the coffee stain could be. How horrible my life was because I spilled coffee on me? How my world has now come to a screeching holt because I had dark brown, drippy marks on a shirt. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't make it ruin my day. I just shrugged - no cussing - and said, "It figures."

My point, if there is one, to this blog is that perhaps we should consider how insignificant the small things can be in life and focus instead on what may be, for our lives, more important, more worth our valuable energy. For the sake of argument I'll say that maybe this lady did decide that a light changing, or not changing, was worthy of her energy, but I suspect she has more things to worry about - fashion for one...but I digress.

1 comments:

Ken La Salle said...

See, I complain whenever I get a chance. That's just me. Over the years, though, it's turned from being a complaint to an inside joke. You can't take it too seriously - and when you do, you just gotta share.