Thursday, November 5, 2009

Day 36

You know how some mornings you wake up and it's all just BAD from the moment you set your feet on the floor? You fight with your sweetie, your pets are making you crazy, traffic is hellish, you can't find your Mp3 player, nothing you put on looks right, and you have a headache.

Indeed.

I've been awake for right at tow hours, and so far, all of that has happened.

I say all of this by way of acknowledging some days it is much, much more difficult to find things for which to be grateful, you see.

But as I was drivign to work this morning, in the traffic from hell - seriously, I think there were four (FOUR!) near misses of getting creamed/ creaming someone on the road, thanks to complete lunacy on the roads - I was thinking "OK, this is the universe telling me I need to work on patience. Clearly." 'Cos every time I'd start to get really frustrated with someone being slow/ annoying/ other wise stupid and get around them, events would conspire against, and I'd be stuck there. And so, I would get annoyed and start to get yelly at the other driver, while I sat in my car (yes, I do realise that they can't hear me, but it makes me feel marginally better), when it occured to me that if I were just more patient, this wouldn't be bugging me so much.

And then I started to think about this woman I used to work with, years ago, at a bagel shop. It was not teribly long after I'd graduated college, and if you've ever worked in food service, you know how unpleasant that job can be on occasion. Things people would never think to say under normal circumstances, they feel they can say to someone in food service. (Actually, I take that back, since I have been noticing a marked decline in courtesy over all.)

Anyhow. People would get very nasty about fairly inconsequential things (really? You're going to throw a hissy because there is portion control in effect, and charges for extra? That's worth a meltdown to you?), and I would get really frustrated/ annoyed/ furious/ etc because there's only so much a counter-worker is empowered to do, you know? But I noticed that one of my co-workers always maintained this incredible level of equinamity, no matter how red-faced and sputtering and loud the person on the other side of the counter got. She never lost the aura of deeply-rooted peace and serenity. So one day I asked her about it, 'cos it compeltely blew my mind. We were about the same age, and I wanted to know how she didn't just want to lose her shit all over these people. She went on with her cleaning of the counter, and said simply "God loves me."

She gained such peace from the depth of her faith. Today, she is my inspiration and reminder that even when you fight with your sweetie, your pets are making you crazy, traffic is hellish, you can't find your Mp3 player, nothing you put on looks right, and you have a headache - serenity is a choice.

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