DAY FIVE
I have always been a very hyper person, very energetic. Even when I am watching TV and relaxing I am always doing something, making something. It seems like I am always in a rush too… time, time, time… the most important thing ever. I don’t have time for this, I need time for that, if I had time then… You can imagine my driving. Even if I am just going to the market, I am always rushing: “I really don’t have time to sit in the car and drive around for hours” kinda attitude but God wanted me to change that so every time I was going to cross the trolley tracks, I had to stop because there was always one coming… sometimes two in a row. Needless to say, I hated that and I would scream inside the car: “Why? Why me? Every time!”
One day when I was waiting there for the trolley to go by, I texted my wonderful coach and told her about it. I told her I hated it, that it made me mad, that I didn’t have time for that, etc. She replied saying: “I want you to observe the trolleys from now on. Notice how many wagons they have, what color they are, do they have commercial decals?, how many doors do they have?, do they all look the same?, etc.” I replied: “Yeah, you just want me to distract myself by doing that but that doesn’t change the fact that it happens all the time and it drives me crazy.” I didn’t want to do it but I did it anyway… to prove her wrong. That was not going to change anything…
Where I lived at the time, no matter where I was going, I had to go over the tracks just to get out of my street, so there was no escape. I did the experiment for three days… First day: lights and bells are going, the bar is coming down… yeah, yeah… three red wagons, two are the same, one looks older. They are all red… no decals, three doors, twelve windows… Ugh! An hour later again… three wagons, two red, one blue… the blue one has smaller windows… no decals, three doors… twelve windows… three hours later… three wagons… all with decals about a TV show, they all look different, they seem to be newer wagons, different design, straighter lines… Second day the same thing… On the third day I get in the car as usual, drive down the street and stop in front of the tracks because again, the lights and bells are going and the bar is coming down… but guess what? When I realized I was starting to analyze the stupid wagons again, I start laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face. What’s wrong with me that this lady has to find a way to distract me so I don’t go nuts because the trolley is going by? Yeah, welcome to my world.
The next book I was told to read was Rejection Proof. It showed me how falling on our faces is not always bad. It is true what some people say: Our mistakes are just lessons. Of course, swallowing a failure is not easy but they always teach us something even if we don’t see it right away.
“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” Wayne Dyer