Epictetus wrote:
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
The phrasing I prefer is:
‘It’s not what happens, it’s what you do that makes the difference.’
This isn’t original to me, it’s simply the way I prefer to think of the same idea. I think I got it from an NLP course or book back in my early 20’s, and it has been a bit of a mantra ever since.
Yesterday was a great example of this. Driving home, we were an hour away from the border in northern Washington, after heading down to Seattle to watch my daughter’s boyfriend play in his first professional Ultimate game. The game was great, and everything went wonderfully up to this point. Then my engine light went on. Then I started to feel a vibration in the steering that quickly developed to a full front end vibration. The next 5 hours didn’t really go as planned.
We pulled off the highway at the next exit and there was a bit of smoke coming out from under the hood. I’m about 1,000 kilometres overdue for an oil change, so we checked the oil, which was very low. After adding more we headed back on the highway and two short exits later we pulled off again and called our road side assistance insurance number.
The call took almost an hour, no local mechanic shops were open, none of them had Sunday hours, we got ripped off paying way too much for some roadside vendor burritos, we had no way home, the first shop our car got taken to was closed, out of business. And I would definitely be carless for most of the coming week, not even knowing the cost or timeline to get my car back until some time on Monday… if we are lucky.
Here is the thing, all four is us, me, my wife, my daughter, and her boyfriend, took everything in stride. I didn’t even notice this until the drive home when my daughter mentioned it. She said, “Considering everything that happened, we all handled it pretty well.” And we did indeed.
Tempers didn’t flare even when we disagreed on what to do next, or when we waited two and a half hours for a tow truck when we were told it would arrive in an hour. When we changed our order for food and the math of the new price didn’t math, we all greed we were hungry and we’d just enjoy the food even if it was overpriced. Whatever came our way was dealt with, no whining or complaining, simply dealing with things, in a neutral or positive way, as they arose… and in the end, a few things did work out for us.
The tow truck driver problem-solved for us and ensured our car got to a reliable place that he vouched for. The burritos were delicious. We got picked up by my sister-in-law who drove over an hour to pick us up, and longer to drop us home before going home herself. And while contemplating riding my bicycle to work tomorrow I remembered that my daughter was picking up a used car she purchased today and her current car is in working order, so I’ve got a car while we figure out what will happen to mine.
Still, this was a less than ideal end to the day and week. We didn’t get home until after 11:30 last night. I still have a car to pick up that’s at a shop I’ve never been to, an hour into the US after getting to the border. I have no idea what the cost will be? But we could have had a miserable experience and instead we had a bit of an adventure. Hopefully my car repairs won’t be too costly, but I’ll do my best to take that in stride too.
