The end of the world

I was in the library queue on the weekend, with my current distraction from the blues being the consumption of quality literature. The librarian was using (I recognised) a notoriously difficult software package to process the loans, and as a result was a bit slow.

Normally this annoys the heck out of me as I want to reach over and show them how to do it, but that day I was being working on being gentle on myself and the people around me, so just waited placidly until she was done fumbling with the F4 button and the erratic barcode reader.

However the woman behind me was not so forgiving - as the librarian peered at the screen's mystical messages, I heard a hurrumph of some magnitude behind my back. I turned to the hurrumpher with a smile of kindness that was an effort but still genuine, and said "Oh it's not the end of the world".

"I'm going to miss my bus - so it is!!" she snarled. A few moments later, as I packed my things into the car I saw her angry purposeful figure race towards (and catch) her bus.

Joseph Campbell once wrote a wonderful piece about how he used to get infuriated with his wife who was always late, until he decided that, since it was such a regular occurrence, he would see if he could create a different experience for himself whenever he had to wait for her. He learned that, instead of getting frustrated and angry, he could explore the moment and his immediate surroundings to a depth he normally wouldn't have time for, and waiting for his wife became something to savour. As he puts it, "As long as you move from a place of fear and desire, you are self-excluded from immortality".

So imagine if the missing of a bus was really the end of the world. That one missed connection was a disaster in your life that invoked insurmountable anger and a collapsing of your reality. I know that I certainly have been guilty of over-dramatic responses to events...but at the same time recognise their falsehood. Ultimately, if the computer is slow, if you miss your bus, if you pick the slow queue at the supermarket - the universe does not deconstruct. Awareness brings you deeper and richer experience of the world, not the end of it.