Tag: philosophical

I got the little van??

Okay so I tried to rent a big van, but, they didn’t have any. I was a little annoyed. I figured that the big van would allow me to move everything from storage in one go. Little van equals many trips.

Bummer.

Then I go to the storage place and they don’t have a hand truck (trolley) for me to borrow….yet. So the big van wouldn’t have been a better choice at all. One trip equals no hand truck. No hand truck means no moving the washing machine. Since the washing machine is the heaviest thing in storage this would have been bad.

Now the important part of the above paragraph was the word yet. It turns out that someone else borrowed the hand truck and will have it back in a couple of hours.  Since I have the little van and have to make several trips, this has worked out perfectly. So my minor annoyance at the lack of a big van to hire was just that, minor.

It never ceases to amaze me how often I will get annoyed by little set-backs and obstacles that cause me to change my “perfect” game plan. When in reality most of these “annoyances” usually make my game plan better. I wonder if I will ever get that point of personal clarity where I will realise that my plans are only perfect if I remember to be flexible enough to “go with the flow”

I know I’m not alone is this reaction to set-backs and obstacles. Most people react the same way. My mother has always said that things happen for a reason. I think that to a huge degree this is true.

Example:

I had an audition for a Japanese training film in 1999. It was going to pay a brilliant wage, good residuals and 1st class accommodation for the duration of the shoot. They were going to be filming in the first week of October that year. What happened? The train I needed to take in order to make the audition in time broke down. I was devastated (it looked like I was a shoe-in for the part), my agent/manager was apoplectic. Fast forward to 14 September 1999 when I was in hospital for major lower back surgery. End result? There was no way at all that I would have been recovered enough to have taken the job. Yet when that train broke down, I was damn near suicidal.

We all need to step back and re-evaluate when we get annoyed about life’s setbacks and obstacles. I’m sure if we think about it long enough we’ll realise it works out more than all right in the end. Just think of the anger you won’t be wasting. Save it for something important, like when you’re doing your taxes.

 

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