Yesterday I missed out on a huge banquet that I had been looking forward to attending with a large group of friends. Instead I was stuck in the activation system of a mobile phone company, able to move neither forward nor back, while a very nice chap in the store, who we’ll call Peter (because that was his name) hung on three separate phone lines – even borrowing devices from his work colleagues – for over an hour and a half, in an effort to get through to someone who could help. I had been guilty, as is often the case, of trying to fit too much into my day, and so when something that should have taken a maximum of 90 minutes eventually takes closer to 4 hours, something had to give.
The banquet I missed (I’m picturing knights and roasted hog, with partially picked bones tossed to wolf hounds lounging by a castle fireplace) was all part of the build up to an all day endurance event this Sunday. (Scratch knights and hogs, and replace with inspiring athletes and troughs of pasta? Sadly, I’m still guessing here.) But in missing it, two things occurred to me.
The first is what I’m doing badly. Namely, treating everything as something on a checklist that needs to be ticked off. The work required to get me to this point has been such a cram, that I have spent almost all my time in doing, and very little in being. I’ve been on the treadmill so long that I’ve forgotten it was always supposed to have been as much about the journey as the destination.
The thing I did well was just roll with it. My patience was eventually rewarded in the store with $175 worth of freebies. True, I’d missed out on the wild boar and the jousting, but I got free stuff. Bonus!
A lot is going to come up in this endurance event, which I have up to 17 hours to complete. Not all of those things will be expected, or even welcome. I just need to keep moving forward and whatever happens, roll with it. If I can do that, $175 will seem like small potatoes when compared to the reward.
“Roll with it… journey… roll with it… journey… roll… “
