I’m writing this sitting on a bench outside the church my choir sings at. I’m well over half an hour early and my housemates are rushing here with all haste to ensure I won’t starve (going eight hungry hours between lunch and dinner while standing and singing for the final three of them is not cool) and to ensure I have my music for rehearsal.
Why?
My bus from work just didn’t show up. I was standing in a bog of stale frustration, waiting for half an hour, watching the number of minutes till my transfer bus would be gone tick down one by one. I was ready to scream that that bus had darn well better have exploded to excuse that as all hope of coming home for dinner ticked away.
But as I stepped off the next bus, I had a look around. The snow had just melted and things were turning green. The world was beautiful. I started to wonder how I could get so mad over something so stupid and out of anybody’s control, the bus driver included. Buddy, you can’t change that the bus was a no show, but the singing birds and the newly naked grass… they’re beautiful. Enjoy them.
I feel like we lose sight of that when we get into routines. Routines get us through the things we have to do, but once they cut us off from the very universe we’re a part of, what good are they? Even if there’s dirty snow everywhere, you’re freezing your face off and there’s no bus in sight, there’s still beauty there. Take a look at that dirty snow. Forget that it’s dirty snow – just look at those crystals; how they formed and melted, refroze and were pelted by a burst of rain. They might be a mountain range or an undulating plain of volcanic ooze.
Maybe this philosophy doesn’t apply to everything; you can’t always separate the content from the form (sure, that glacier is melting alarmingly fast, threatening to wipe your island village, culture and language of 600 remaining speakers out of existence, but isn’t that melting glacier pretty?), and sometimes over-adherence to it can just come off as loopy or obnoxious, but it helps me keep things in perspective. A no-show bus completely throwing your schedule out of whack is annoying, but it isn’t the end of the world. Which is beautiful. So chill out.